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THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



EDITED BY 

OLIPHANT SMEATON 



Cranmer and 
The Reformation in England 

By Arthur D. Innes, M.A. 



THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



Cranmer and 

The Reformation 
in England 



By 

Arthur D. Innes, M.A. 

u 

Sometime Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford 



New York. Charles Scribner's Sons 
1900 






I to 74 



01 






4- 









PREFACE 



The purpose of this volume is not so much to present 
a biography of Cranmer as to give a sketch of that 
ecclesiastical period throughout which he remains a 
consistently prominent figure : a period during which 
he, more than any other single individual, left his 
personal impress upon a national institution. 

It is a peculiarity of the Reformation in England 
that it is not associated with any one figure of heroic 
proportions. Germany has her Luther; the Nether- 
lands, William the Silent ; Calvin dominated half the 
Protestant world, and more ; Knox, dour and grim 
as he was, had no little of the heroic quality. In 
England neither Cranmer nor any other occupies a 
corresponding position. There is a sense in which the 
historian may legitimately speak of a person as having 
created a movement ; but he may not say it of Cranmer. 
He does not absorb the interest while associates fall 
into the background ; we feel that it is the mediocrity 
of his associates which enables him to absorb so much 
as he does. 

This is apt to be the way with England. The Refor- 
mation has its political counterpart, not in the Great 
Rebellion with its Hampden and its Cromwell, but in 



vi PREFACE 

the " Glorious Revolution " with its inglorious Whigs. 
To them we owe our constitutional liberties ; and it is 
to men of a similar calibre that we owe our religious 
emancipation. 

Amongst the various figures, however, Cranmer 
holds the position of pre-eminence. Our Reformation 
in the sixteenth century may be described as having 
had four stages. During the first there is a movement 
intellectual and moral, but legislation does not in- 
tervene. This closes in 1529. In the second stage 
the fundamental feature is the assertion of Secular 
supremacy over Ecclesiastical administration ; in the 
third it is the revision of ecclesiastical ordinances. The 
fiery interlude of Mary's reign leads to the fourth 
stage — in effect the confirmation of the two preceding 
in a recognised and established system. The Reforma- 
tion becomes an accomplished fact. From that time 
the body ecclesiastical, as recognised by the State, 
alters very little in character; any vigorous reform- 
ing movements thereafter, the lines of which extend 
beyond the scheme of the Elizabethan settlement, 
tending to result in separation from the established 
organisation rather than in changes within it. 

In the first of these four stages Cranmer does not 
appear. He belonged to the movement, but he had no 
active part in it. In the second stage the leading 
figures are Henry vni. and Thomas Cromwell : Cranmer 
fluttering through it, sometimes encouraging, generally 
acquiescent, occasionally offering a somewhat ineffective 
resistance, never more than an influence. In the third 
he is the controlling character ; not indeed displaying 
a vigorous mastery, but on the whole successfully 
maintaining a position which but for him would 



PREFACE vii 

assuredly not have been maintained at the time nor 
accepted — as it was — in the fourth stage, when he had 
already earned the martyr's crown. In these two 
stages, the second and third, the work of the Refor- 
mation was wrought, and the course shaped which it 
should take in the future. It is right, therefore, that 
his should stand as the representative name. The first 
stage is in this volume treated as an extended prologue ; 
the fourth only as epilogue. 

The telling of this story involves certain difficulties. 
An attitude of enthusiasm would be pleasant ; but for 
the most part the subject forbids enthusiasm. To play 
the advocate for a party is easy ; but with Henry and 
Cromwell, Cranmer and Gardiner, Northumberland 
and Mary Tudor to depict, it is in no wise easy to 
" nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice." 
It appears all but impossible to write of those times 
without yielding either to the Roman, the Anglican, 
or the Puritan bias. Till a comparatively recent 
period there was no hearing for any but the last 
school; of late years those Anglicans who reject the 
name of Protestant have held the field, save for some 
acute, if not always convincing, expositions of the 
Romanist point of view. It is hardly possible to make 
a single statement as to the beliefs, motives, intentions, 
or character of any one of our dramatis personal which 
will not be quite honestly and quite flatly contra- 
dicted by the adherents of one or other of the three 
schools : so that the discovery of truth becomes a highly 
complicated process. 

To this must be added a special perplexity — party 
terminology. Convenience brought about the practice 
of using the term Catholic as equivalent to Romanist, 



viii PREFACE 

and opposing it to the term Protestant. Then came a 
revival of " Catholic " in its wider and legitimate sense ; 
but it was still maintained as a contrary to Protestant, 
the sense of which was narrowed till it became almost 
equivalent to Calvinist ; and the two words have 
become party badges within a Church which is at once 
essentially Catholic in virtue of its continuity, and 
essentially Protestant in virtue of its Reformation. 

I have attempted in these pages to revert to a legiti- 
mate use of these terms. The primary antagonism is 
between the Romanists, who maintained the papal 
authority, and the Protestants, who rejected it. The 
secondary antagonism is between the Catholics, who 
maintained the authority of tradition and the early 
Fathers, and the Puritans, who held by the words of 
Scripture. The Catholic may be either Romanist or 
Protestant. The Protestant may be either Puritan or 
Catholic. The mutually exclusive terms are, Romanist 
and Protestant, Puritan and Catholic. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface v 



Chronological Tables 



CHAPTER I 

Prologue : Unrest 

Pioneers of the Reformation — Europe in the Fifteenth Century- — 
The New Learning — Savonarola — State of England — The 
Supplicacyon for the Beggcrs — Ecclesiastical Corruption 
— Its Causes — Special Conditions in England — Motive Force 
for Reformation ......... 



CHAPTER II 

Prologue : The Scholars' Movement, 1496-1529 

Colet Lectures at Oxford — The New Method— Characteristics — 
Erasmus at Oxford — Colet Dean of St. Paul's — Accession of 
Henry vin. — Erasmus and More — The Utopia — Religion in 
Utopia — Characteristics of the Scholars — The New Testament 
of Erasmus — The Extirpation of Heresy — Colet's Address to 
Convocation — The Reformation Intended . . . .12 

CHAPTER III 

Prologue : The Lutheran Revolt, 1517-1530 

Luther and Erasmus — The Meaning of Luther — Luther and Tetzel 
— Luther and the Papal Bull — The Diet of Worms — The 
Edict of Worms — The Heads of the Christian States — The 
Peasants' War — The Papal Elections — Political Consequences 
—The Diet of Spires— The Sack of Rome— The Protest of 
Spires — The Schmalkaldic League, and After — The Zurich 
Reformers — The Augshurg Confession 23 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

A Tender Conscience : 1503-1529 



PAGE 



Henry vni — His Marriage with Catherine of Aragon — The 
Dispensation — A Conscience Undisturbed — A Conscience 
Awakened — Views on the Nullity of the Marriage — First 
Steps for "Divorce"— Their Failure— The New Method . 35 



CHAPTER V 

The King's Instruments 

Cranmer at Cambridge — The Discovery of Cranmer — The Bearing 
of his Theory of the Divorce — The King and the Scholar — 
The Training of a Primate — Thomas Cromwell — His Char- 
acter — Italy : the " Prince " — Cromwell the Adventurer — 
Cromwell and Wolsey — Cromwell and Henry ... 42 

CHAPTER VI 

The Supreme Head : 1529-1534 

Aspects of Henry's Reformation — It was not Doctrinal — Papal 
Supremacy — The Divorce and the Universities — Cranmer 
made Archbishop — Act in Restraint of Appeals — Cranmer 
pronounces the Divorce — Papal Condemnation thereof — 
Annates Act — Reformation Parliament — First Acts against 
Abuses — Heresy-Hunting — The Clergy under Praemunire — 
The " Supremacy " Clause — The Supplication against the 
Ordinaries — The Bill of Wards — Answers of Convocation — 
"Submission of the Clergy "• — Resignation of Thomas More — 
Benefit of Clergy — Effects of the Legislation — Its Character . 52 

CHAPTER VII 

The Hand of Cromwell: 1534-1540 

Legislation of 1534 — Act of Succession — More and Fisher refuse 
the Oath — Further Legislation, 1534-5 — Execution of More 
and Fisher — Cranmer and the King's Victims — Cromwell 
Vicar-General — The Monastic System- — Corruption of the 
Monasteries — Previous Evidence — The Evidence before Parlia- 
ment — The First Visitation and Suppression — The Pilgrimage 
of Grace — Completion of the Suppression — Tuning the Pulpits 
—Fall of Cromwell 66 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER VIII 

Fidei Defensor : 1529-1547 

PAGE 

Cranmer and Royal Supremacy — Freedom of Conscience — Henry's 
Views on Authority — Restraint of Superstitious Practices — 
Translation of Scripture — Suppression of Heresy — Tyndale's 
Bible — Coverdale, Matthew, and the Great Bible — Proposed 
Revision — The English Litany — The Ten Articles — The 
Bishops' Book — The German Protestants — The Six Articles — 
Celibacy — The King's Book — Discussions on the Sacraments 
and on Orders — The Eationale — Death and Character of 
Henry 80 

CHAPTER IX 

Affairs on the Continent : 1530-1563 

The German Modus Vivendi — Henry viii. holds aloof — The Polit- 
ical Riddle — Growth and Fall of the Schmalkaldic League — 
Demand for a General Council — Difficulty of summoning 
one — The Diet of Ratisbon — Council summoned at Trent — 
Ignatius Loyola — The Jesuit System- — Calvin and Calvinism 
— The Position in 1547 — Maurice of Saxony — From the Peace 
of Augsburg to 1563 97 

CHAPTER X 

Josiah: 1547-1549 

The New Government— Gardiner in Opposition — Theories of the 
Eucharist — Justification — Purgatory — Celibacy — Images — 
The Plan of Campaign — The Homilies — The Paraphrase — 
The Visitation — Imprisonment of Gardiner and Bonner — 
Legislation of Edward's First Year — War against Images — 
Suppression of Preaching — New Order of Communion — The 
First Prayer-Book Ill 

CHAPTER XI 

The Puritan Eddy: 1549-1553 

Weakness of Edward's Government — Reform and Plunder — The 
Western Rising — Ket's Rising — Fall of Somerset — Swiss 
Influences — Ridley — Alasco — Hooper and Knox — Cranmer 
and the Eucharist — Aggressive Reformers — Nonconformity 
— " Reformatio Legum"— Second Act of Uniformity — Second 
Prayer-Book— The Ordinal— The Forty-Two Articles— Char- 
acter of the Government — Cranmer's Reformation . .127 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XII 
Reaction and Counter-Reaction : 1553-1559 

PAGE 

Northumberland's Plot — Moderation of Mary — Imprisonment of 
Bishops — Repeal of Ecclesiastical Laws — Wyatt's Rebellion : 
its Consequences — The Married Clergy — Character of Parlia- 
ment — Marriage of Philip and Mary — Gardiner — Reconcilia- 
tion with Rome — Character of Mary — -First Year of Persecu- 
tion — Who were the Persecutors ? — Conner and Gardiner — 
Unique Character of the Persecution — Resulting Reaction . 143 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Least of the Martyrs : 1529-1556 

The Martyrs' Reward — The Reproach of Cranmer — Under Henry 
VIII.- — Cranmer and the Supremacy — His Work under Edward 
— His Lack of Self- Reliance — His Occasional Courage — Cranmer 
under Attainder — The Three Bishops at Oxford — Cranmer's 
Trial and Condemnation — He asks to "confer" — Submis- 
sion, Degradation, and Appeal — Third and Fourth Submis- 
sions — The Recantation — The Second Recantation — The 
Virtue of Courage— Last Days — St Mary's Church — The 
Witness .......... 157 

CHAPTER XIV 

Epilogue : The Reformation in England 

Results — Two Aspects of the Reformation — Sovereignty of the 
Temporal Power — Becket and Cranmer — Cranmer and Com- 
prehension — The Clergy and the Reformation — Comprehen- 
sion and Ambiguity — Elizabeth — Rival Theories — Church 
and Nation Commensurate — Church Endowments — Church a 
Divine Institution — The Laity and the Reformation : First 
Stages ; Under Edward ; Under Mary — English Protestantism 175 

Index 191 



LIST OF CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 



I. Contemporary Sovereigns, 1501-1560. 
II. Notable Dates bearing on the Reformation, 

BEFORE 1529. 

III. Henry viii.'s Reformation, 1529-1547. 

IV. Cranmer's Reformation, 1547-1553. 
V. The Reactions, 1553-1559. 



XIV 



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CEANMEE 



CHAPTER I 

Prologue: Unrest 

The Reformation in England, treated as a separate 
phenomenon, begins with what may be called the 
movement for a constitutional reform : reform free 
from any schismatic character. In a sense, Wiclif was 
the father of the Reformation ; but he and his disciples 
were in revolt against the powers that be, and they 
hardly brought reform nearer. They were but pioneers. 
Lollardry as a religious movement obtained no general 
hold, its social and economic aspects being more prom- 
inent. Reformation of the Church, a new moral and 
religious standard, entered the sphere of practical 
politics when it came to be demanded by her own 
most loyal sons without arousing the opposition of 
the State. And therefore it is with the " Oxford 
Reformers " that the era may be said to commence : 
in the closing decade of the fifteenth century. 

Not in England only, but throughout Christendom, 
the time for purgation had arrived. The conscience 



2 CRANMER 

of the Western World imperatively needed arousing. 
State-craft during the last hundred years had degener- 
ated into a science of pure expediency which recognised 
no moral law. Our own Henry V. was the mirror of 
chivalry; the absolute sincerity of his religious con- 
viction has never been questioned ; but he plunged 
into a war which for sheer inexcusable aggression is 
unsurpassed. The English were driven out of France 
by one who is perhaps the most perfectly heroic figure 
in history ; men whose standard of nobility was cer- 
tainly no whit below the average of their time burned 
her for a witch and a heretic. Europe permitted 
the Turk to vaunt the triumph of the Crescent over 
the Cross. Louis XI. indulged himself in ecstasies 
of fetish - worship in the intervals of concocting 
treacheries. In Italy the arts of lying and poisoning 
were achieving their finest consummation. Every- 
where learning had sunk to its lowest ebb. The 
genuine subtleties of the earlier scholasticism had 
given place to a mere barren logomachy. Among 
the clergy, advancement was the reward, not of holi- 
ness, learning, eloquence, administrative ability, but of 
connection by blood or by service with powerful 
families. 

But light was to illumine the intellectual darkness. 
Before 1450 the printing press had taken form ; and 
now the shame of Christendom was to become its 
salvation. Constantinople fell in 1453; the fugitives 
brought with them the forgotten literature of the 
ancient world. The feast suddenly set before them 
proved, perhaps, something too intoxicating to the 
finer intelligences ; the prevailing materialism, intel- 
lectualised, was hardly rendered more edifying though 



PROLOGUE: UNREST 3 

it was less gross. But the New Learning soon passed to 
those who were prepared to make a nobler use of it ; 
who could grasp its spiritual significance as well as its 
pagan fascination ; and with the opportunity to know 
came an increased desire of knowing. The New 
Culture, moralised, formed the Conservative element 
of the Reformation ; while, by giving the Peoples an 
open Bible, it provided a revolutionary and Puritan 
basis. Thus the extreme Reformers took their stand 
on the letter of Scripture, the Conservatives took 
theirs on its reasonable interpretation. 

The first effect, however, of the New Learning did 
not tend to reformation at all, but to a sceptical con- 
formity on the part of the cultured, an increasingly 
shameless abuse of their office by the clergy, and a 
popular depth of superstition, not, it may be, really 
greater than before, but more remarkable by contrast 
with intellectual licence. The consummation was 
reached when almost the vilest member of quite the 
vilest family whose names disgrace the annals of Europe 
was elected as the Vicar of Christ on earth in the 
person of the Borgia, Pope Alexander VI., in 1492. 

Almost simultaneously with this utmost degradation 
of the highest office in Christendom there arose in 
Florence, trumpet - tongued, comminatory, prophetic, 
the forerunner of reform, Girolamo Savonarola. The 
tangible effects in Italy were shortlived enough; but 
the spark of moral enthusiasm was kindled, and the 
intelligent perception of fraud had already been 
aroused. Between the two, the corruptions which had 
overgrown the Church were doomed, in part at least, 
to be swept away. 

In Italy, no doubt, that corruption had assumed its 



4 CRANMER 

most portentous proportions; in England, probably, 
it was less marked than anywhere on the Continent. 
The English people have a genius for preserving the 
decencies ; and the relative prevalence of free insti- 
tutions, coupled with an unfailing resistance to all 
attempts at establishing an ecclesiastical within the 
secular imperium, had enforced sobriety. Standing 
altogether outside the pale of the Empire, England 
was endowed with a national unity unknown in more 
southern lands ; and was enabled to preserve a certain 
orderliness, even through the turmoil of thirty years 
of civil war, which the European States could not 
parallel. Most important of all, her insular position 
had imparted or secured a national character to the 
Church within her borders, so that the clergy and the 
ecclesiastical organisation generally stood in an excep- 
tionally close relation to the State, and in an exception- 
ally independent relation to the Holy See. 

It is singularly difficult to arrive with even approxi- 
mate certainty at a clear idea of the condition of the 
Church in England before and during the first fifty 
years of the sixteenth century. Some of the anti- 
ecclesiastical literature of the times appears more akin 
to the rhetoric of the Hyde Park agitator of to-day 
than to anything else. Putrescence would be a mild 
term for the state of things therein described. 

About the year 1527 one Simon Fish wrote a book 
entitled A Supplicacyon for the Beggers, being pro- 
fessedly a suggestion that the money appropriated to 
the support of the clergy would be more profitably 
bestowed upon the poor, the maimed, and the halt, 
who were dependent on charity for their livelihood. 
It is, in fact, an all-round indictment of the clergy. 



PROLOGUE: UNREST 5 

" There is yn the tymes of youre noble predecessours 
passed craftily crept into this your realme an other 
sort (not of impotent but) of strong puissaunt and 
counterfeit holy and ydell beggers and vacabundes. 
. . . These are (not the herdes, but the rauinous 
wolves going in herdes clothing devouring the flocke) 
the Bisshoppes, Abbottes, Priours, Deacons, Arch- 
deacons, Suffraganes, Prestes, Monkes, Chanons, Freres, 
Pardoners, and Somners." This " rauinous, cruell, and 
insatiabill generacion " are proved by a curious arith- 
metical process to have absorbed half the landed estate 
of the country, and to fatten upon alms at the rate of 
nearly £50,000 per annum, although numbering but one 
in four hundred of the population. "And whate do 
al these gredy sort of sturdy idell holy theues ? . . . 
Nothing but that all your subiectes shulde fall into 
disobedience, and rebellion against your grace and be 
under theim. . . . These be they that corrupt the hole 
generation of mankind yn your realme." The charge 
of unbridled sexual immorality is hurled at the 
" bloudsuppers " with a sweeping universality and a 
copiousness of language which would reduce to envious 
despair the most uncompromising enemy of a bloated 
aristocracy. "Where is your swerde, power, crowne, 
and dignitie, become that shuld punische the felonies, 
rapes, murdres, and treasons committed by this sinfull 
generacion ? " It is a trifle comic to find this flagel- 
lator of ecclesiastical vices going back to include in his 
curse Stephen Langton, the stout opponent of King 
John's tyranny ; that monarch being represented as a 
holy and righteous ruler ! It appears, however, on 
perusal that the moving cause of this pamphlet was 
the punishment for heresy of one Richard Hunne, 



6 CRANMER 

who had " commenced accyon of premunire ageinst a 
prest." 

It is impossible to take such an indictment as this 
seriously. The language used would almost be extra- 
vagant if applied to the Tartar hordes who followed 
the conquering banner of Tamerlane. Written when 
the great Dean Colet was hardly cold in his grave, 
when Warham was Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
Fisher Bishop of Rochester, the frantic excesses of 
Simon Fish stand condemned on their very face. And 
yet, in the modern introduction to the reprint from 
which the foregoing quotations are taken, the work is 
described as a "terse and brave little book." It is, 
indeed, conceivable that it was produced by a sincere 
fanaticism, but if so it was fanaticism run mad. The 
one thing to be said is that even the rankest fanaticism 
and the fiercest hatred could never have evolved such 
a parody of serious invective unless there had been 
colourable grounds for holding the mass of the clergy 
guilty of greed, worldliness, and lax morality. 

We shall have to deal more specifically in a subsequent 
chapter with the charges against the monasteries, 
which were made the justification of the great spolia- 
tion. It is no longer possible to feel any reasonable 
doubt that these were gravely, not to say grossly, 
exaggerated ; but it is equally impossible to accept as 
convincing the defence of their ingenious advocates. 

It is unnecessary to fall back on the evidence of 
men like Simon Fish, or on the traditions of scandal 
readily accepted by Protestant controversialists in 
days when monks, Jesuits, and the Inquisition were 
inextricably mixed up in the popular mind with the 
misdeeds, real and hypothetical, of the Spaniards. Nor 



PROLOGUE: UNREST 7 

is it necessary to lay any great stress on the reports of 
commissioners appointed by a Government which was 
deliberately concocting a case. Certain facts are 
palpable. The clergy of England acknowledged the 
primacy of the pope, at whose hands the Archbishop 
of Canterbury received the pallium, and England was 
not free from the corruption of the papal dominion. 

At Rome the higher ecclesiastical powers were 
debased enough to place the Borgia on the papal 
throne. Continental bishops and archbishops practically 
performed the functions of secular princes as well as 
those of Fathers of the Church. They had large revenues 
under their control. Their temptations were particu- 
larly strong. Instead of standing forth and denounc- 
ing the prevalent moral corruption, they went with it, 
and the minor clergy followed the example set them in 
high places. Probably they were no more prone to 
iniquity than their lay neighbours, but their opportun- 
ities were greater, and they did not neglect them. 

The same principles applied in England. A system 
capable of working nobly while the clergy were 
inspired by moral enthusiasm became ruinous when 
enthusiasm died down. If bishops and abbots neglected 
their pastoral responsibilities, it was only natural that 
the sense of responsibility should dwindle away in the 
parish priest and the monk. If the authorities were 
las in enforcing discipline, the rank and file were not 
likely to be over-zealous. Without assuming anything 
that can fairly be called universal corruption, it is 
obvious that a very prevalent laxity was an inevitable 
result of the conditions. 

But beyond the slackness produced by immunity 
from discipline, the temptation to positive abuse of the 



8 CRANMER 

sacred office was strong. According to the theory of 
the Catholic Church, repentance and confession were 
the conditions precedent of pardon and absolution for 
sin; and it lay with the priest to judge on what terms 
the absolution should be pronounced. Also, the prayers 
of the Church would avail to mitigate the penalties 
of purgatory. It was a very easy step from the latter 
doctrine to teach that the prayers of the Church might 
be bought ; and from the former, first, to the idea that 
it was in the power of the priest to absolve or to refuse 
absolution at will, and second, to the corollary that 
absolution might in practice be bought. The con- 
clusion was obvious. By conciliating the clergy, 
absolution might be obtained and the term of purga- 
tory be shortened. The powers of a priesthood 
regarded as the sole legitimate channel for grace were 
simply irresistible. Whatever the orthodox doctrine 
might be, the theory vulgarly taught and held offered 
an enormous inducement to the clergy, in plain terms, 
to treat the Grace of God as a commodity which they 
could sell at their own price. And there is no sort of 
question that, with more or less honesty of intent, 
great numbers of the clergy did yield to the induce- 
ment and teach that sin might be condoned and its 
penalties escaped by adequate cash payment. That 
the pure doctrine of the Catholic Church countenanced 
no such theory or practice is nothing to the point. 
The essence of the charge against the unreformed 
Church is that its effectual teachings and actual 
practices were distortions and abuses of the pure 
doctrine. 

The same point applies to the case of the Monas- 
teries. The whole Monastic system in any possible 



PROLOGUE: UNREST 9 

form is open to attack and is capable of defence, as is 
the doctrine that the priest is a needful intermediary 
between man and God. But the effective demand for 
a reformation was created not by the Monastic 
system, but by the abuse of it. It is vain to point to 
the rules of the religious houses, and say " these men 
cannot have been idle, vicious, and luxurious." The 
gravamen of the accusation against them was that their 
rules were set at naught in practice. Primarily in 
both cases, the principle was not challenged ; but when 
the abuse found defenders in high places, the claim of 
the principle was called in question. So at a later day 
the American colonies submitted to taxation for com- 
mercial purposes ; but when taxation was applied for 
revenue purposes, the newly claimed right was chal- 
lenged, and when it was defended the whole right of 
taxation was attacked. 

Directly or indirectly the clergy were in the habit 
of making a highly profitable use of absolution and 
masses for the dead. Nor did they hesitate in like 
manner to encourage the worship of relics and of 
images in a directly fraudulent manner for purposes of 
gain ; attributing special virtues, for instance, to " Our 
Lady" of this or that shrine — a proceeding utterly 
irreconcilable with the doctrine that the image was to 
be regarded merely as a symbol, and not as a thing in 
itself worshipful ; and displaying relics which they 
knew to be sheer deceptions. Again, the charge has 
nothing to do primarily with the theory that true 
relics demand reverence, even that they may be 
miraculously endowed; or with the contention that 
images are to be commended as aids to worship. 

This, then, was the state of things for which a 



io CRANMER 

drastic remedy was required in England. The higher 
clergy were for the most part engaged in political or 
at any rate worldly interests rather than on those of 
religion, high offices of State being much in their 
hands. Their neglect of their responsibilities led 
necessarily to a similar neglect on the part of their 
lesser brethren. An almost universal laxity of disci- 
pline carried in its train a very general disposition 
to extreme self-indulgence and idleness, frequently 
accompanied by actually vicious living. The doctrines 
of the Church were habitually distorted and abused, 
not without practical sanction from the highest 
quarters, in order to acquire money. The lay folk were 
demoralised by the encouragement of the belief that a 
long purse was an efficacious passport through purga- 
tory ; while symbols were effectively transformed into 
idols, and reverence for the saints was perverted into 
local fetish-worship. Learning had fallen into general 
neglect, and the theology of the schools had sunk to a 
pseudo-metaphysical and meaningless jargon. 

These characteristics, however, were not peculiar to 
the Church in England ; she showed them in varying 
degrees in every country of Christendom. But there 
were distinguishing features about the ecclesiastical 
organisation in this country, which materially in- 
fluenced the course of the Reformation here. 

The clergy in England had never from the earliest 
days admitted the unqualified supremacy of the pope. 
If he invaded their constitutional independence, they 
were ready to appeal to the Crown; as, when the 
Crown threatened them, they were prepared to appeal 
to Rome. Aggression on the part of one of those 
rival authorities was tolerably certain to drive them 



PROLOGUE: UNREST n 

for the time being into the arms of the other ; but the 
main position was never surrendered, that whatever 
authority either pope or king preserved over them was 
distinctly limited. The State, on the other hand, had 
habitually, and with varying success, challenged the 
papal authority, claiming for itself large powers of 
control, even to the right of confiscating Church pro- 
perty. The Conqueror himself had forbidden the 
admission of papal legates ; Henry II. had done battle 
with Becket for the jurisdiction of the King's Courts 
in disputes between clerics and laymen. The Statutes of 
Mortmain had checked or attempted to check bestowal 
of lands on the Church ; the Statutes of Provisors had 
challenged papal claims to patronage ; the Statutes of 
Prasmunire had forbidden appeals to Rome ; the first 
Edward laid a tax of one-half upon the clergy for his 
wars; under the house of Lancaster large proposals 
for sheer confiscation had been mooted as perfectly 
legitimate. 

If the first real movement for reform was to emanate 
from men of character and learning, the first legislative 
action was to be initiated by a monarch who found 
himself inconvenienced by papal claims, and for whom 
the emancipation from papal authority and the filling 
of his own coffers were the first consideration. He 
was to find his instruments in an archbishop — selected, 
no doubt, for that very purpose — who was ready to go 
to unprecedented lengths in the recognition of royal 
supremacy, and in a minister bent on consolidating 
the absolute control of the Crown over every depart- 
ment of State. 



CHAPTER II 

Prologue : The Scholars' Movement, 1496-1529 

The spark of moral enthusiasm kindled at Florence by- 
Savonarola was caught in England by John Colet. 

Born in 1466, the same year probably as his cosmo- 
politan associate Erasmus, and twelve years before 
Thomas More, the son of a wealthy and successful 
London merchant who held the office of Lord Mayor, 
Colet went to Oxford ; where, being still a young man, 
he was inspired with a thirst for the New Learning 
which Grocyn and Linacre were beginning to intro- 
duce from Italy ; a thirst associated in his case with 
a religious turn of thought which made him deliber- 
ately elect to take orders in preference to pursuing 
the brilliant prospects undoubtedly opened by a 
secular career to a man of his capacity, backed up by 
his father's wealth and established position. 

About 1494 he visited Italy, the home of scholars ; 
leaving behind him at Oxford young More, who, 
according to the not unusual practice, had gone up to 
the university at the age of fourteen, and whose 
brilliant gifts and fascinating character had probably 
enabled him already to form an intimacy which was to 
be lifelong with his senior. 

Whether in the course of his travels Colet fell under 

12 



THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 13 

the direct personal influence of Savonarola is un- 
certain ; but it is hardly likely that he would have 
omitted some sojourn in Florence when the great 
preacher was at the height of his fame. At any 
rate he returned to Oxford in 1496, his mind greatly 
enriched by his experiences ; and forthwith com- 
menced to deliver a series of lectures on the Pauline 
Epistles which contributed a new departure in univer- 
sity teaching. 

The fundamental change was the application of a 
new method ; the method of critical exposition taking 
the place of scholastic dissection : of studying a dis- 
course or treatise instead of dealing in a collection of 
texts and phrases. The old way of commenting as it 
were on a miscellaneous congeries of sentences — each of 
which had to be elucidated, interpreted, complicated, 
reinterpreted, illustrated by other sentences relevant 
or irrelevant, allegorised, referred to authority, referred 
to each other, and so prepared for interpretation all 
over again in infinite series — gave place to an intelli- 
gent search for the meaning of the writer. Out of 
this again emerged the perception that the Pauline 
Epistles were exceedingly practical treatises on life 
and conduct rather than a collection of puzzles for 
the exercise of erudite ingenuity. And the lecturer's 
enthusiasm for the vividly human personality of the 
great apostle communicated itself to his hearers ; 
sowing the seeds of revolt not against the Church but 
against scholasticism. 

The movement thus initiated was not in its nature 
at all inimical to orthodoxy ; there was no suggestion 
of heresy about it. It involved simply an appeal to 
the learned to study the sacred texts in the tongue in 



i 4 CRANMER 

which they were written, instead of treating them as 
extracts from Duns and Aquinas. It was a challenge 
to the doctors of the schools, not an attack on the 
dogmas of the Church. 

The teacher was eloquent, vigorous, learned, original, 
and very much in earnest. His lectures gathered 
round him all the intelligence of the university, and 
made no little stir. Colet did not confine his atten- 
tions exclusively to St. Paul, but was ready to apply 
his critical principles to the whole of the Scriptures, 
Old and New Testament alike, dwelling constantly on 
the importance of going to the fountainhead, and 
reading the originals, instead of treating the Vulgate 
as a verbally inspired version, as was the common 
habit. Even ordinarily cultivated persons were still 
very much disposed to regard Greek as a dangerous 
heathen tongue, the study of which might lead the 
student woefully astray; and Thomas More seems to 
have been hurried away from the university by his 
father, in order to take to work seriously as a law 
student, partly because the language of Plato was 
suspected of being too alluring. 

The scholastic prejudices were too long established 
and too deeply rooted to be immediately removed ; 
the local vis inertice offered a stolid resistance ; but 
the movement appealed strongly to everything that 
was best in Oxford. The peculiar characteristic of 
the New Learning in England was, that practically 
from the very beginning it was turned into the channel 
of biblical research and religious inquiry by men who 
were Christians first and scholars afterwards ; instead 
of, as happened in Italy, the pursuit of pagan ideals 
by men who were scholars first and Christians after- 



THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 15 

wards, if, indeed, they were Christians at all in any- 
thing but outward profession. 

A few years later, about 1504 or 1505, Colet was 
made Dean of St. Paul's, and transferred his activities to 
London, where he rapidly achieved the highest reputa- 
tion as a preacher ; whose conversation in private life 
maintained the same high level as his pulpit utter- 
ances, while his personal character was convincingly 
admirable. 

It was while he was still at Oxford that Colet and 
Erasmus became acquainted ; possibly they had met 
before in Paris. In 1498 Erasmus, visiting England, 
was attracted to the university on the Isis, and formed 
a deep and lasting friendship with Colet, and also with 
More. More was to play his part in the movement as 
a politician, a statesman, a man of letters, moving in 
the world of affairs; Colet played his as a preacher 
and teacher in Oxford and London ; not only scholars, 
but kings, princes, and prelates in every European 
State were to listen to the voice of Erasmus, though as 
yet he had not achieved his later position. 

At this time, in fact, Erasmus was Colet's pupil. 
His latinity was superior, but in Greek he was still a 
long way behind; and Greek was very much more 
important than Latin. The direction and the inspiration 
which Erasmus derived from Colet were to issue later 
in a work of vast importance; of more immediate 
consequence, not to England only, but to all Europe, 
than anything written by Colet himself ; yet, but for 
Colet it is likely enough that it would never have 
been written at all. 

Eighteen years, however, were to elapse before 
Erasmus published his edition of the Greek Testament. 



1 6 CRANMER 

When he left Oxford, after a brief sojourn, it was 
much against the will of Colet, who would have per- 
suaded him even then to devote himself to exegesis ; 
but Erasmus was wiser, knowing that he had yet very 
much to learn before he could speak with that con- 
fidence in himself which was needful to convince 
others. 

In the interval, Colet was transferred to the deanery. 
More, still a " beardless boy," so distinguished himself 
in Parliament by his successful opposition to one of 
Henry Vll.'s demands for subsidies, that he had to 
retire for a while into private life ; and when Erasmus 
returned to England for another brief visit in 1505, he 
found his two friends established in London, and in 
constant intimate intercourse. 

In 1509 Henry VII. died, and Henry vin. at the 
age of eighteen succeeded him ; being at that time a 
youth of the most brilliant promise. To a magnificent 
physique were joined in him a brain of unusual acute- 
ness, a geniality of manner, and a wealth of intellectual 
culture, which gave hopes of a right royal disposition ; 
hopes to be marred by the gradual development of a 
cold-blooded selfishness and a fiery temper which had 
not as yet betrayed themselves. The dead king had been 
an exceptionally astute, strong, and capable monarch ; 
but his sordid avarice, whatever political advantages it 
may have conferred, had made him intensely unpopular. 
The accession of the young prince, endowed with 
every attractive quality, was hailed on all hands with 
an outburst of enthusiasm. The Saturnian rule was 
to be renewed; a golden age was to return. The 
instruments of his father's tyranny were cast down ; 
learning, the arts, civil justice, were to flourish in the 



THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 17 

land. The friends of Erasmus urged him to make 
haste to return and rejoice in the sunlight. 

Erasmus came ; and the sun continued to shine. 
The high spirits of himself and his friends were 
reflected in the "Encomium Morice," or "Praise of 
Folly," which he wrote and published soon after his 
arrival — a light-hearted satire on the follies, chiefly- 
scholastic and ecclesiastical, of the day, which, in a 
humorous vein, strikes the keynote of reform as it 
was understood by scholars and men of wit; neces- 
sarily avoiding in expression the high seriousness 
which lay behind. The gift of combining that high 
seriousness with a subtle and ever-present humour, 
the jest which covers an earnest meaning, the earnest 
which is conveyed in a jesting form, was Thomas 
More's; and shortly afterwards, in 1516, it took form 
in the Utopia. 

With greater clearness, because more seriously than 
the Praise of Folly, the Utopia conveys the attitude 
of the Reformers before Luther had identified re- 
form with war against the papacy. In depicting his 
imaginary State in an otherwise unknown quarter of 
that New World which Columbus had just revealed to 
Europe, More was obviously not designing a society 
such as might in his view have been reconstructed out 
of a European country; any more than Plato would 
have supposed it possible to reconstruct Athens on the 
system of his Republic; but some fairly conclusive 
inferences can be drawn both as to the prevailing 
social conditions and the kind of improvements which 
seemed desirable. More himself would hardly have 
proposed to introduce his idealised conditions by 
legalisation. 



i 8 CRANMER 

He starts from a position which no political theorist 
will question ; which nevertheless was in singular 
contrast to the practice of the time. This is the 
Platonic doctrine that it is the function of the 
governor to rule for the benefit of the governed. 
If Thrasymachus could only have studied the Prince 
of Macchiavelli, he would have felt even more thor- 
oughly convinced that there was something hopelessly 
wrong with the Socratic argument ; that it was in 
fact irredeemably opposed to human nature. But the 
Utopia no less obviously assumes that the doctrine is 
a complete invasion of all recognised practice. Its 
author was quite evidently of opinion that so long as 
princes were in the habit of hankering for extended^ 
dominions, so long their actual dominions were doomed 
to misgovernment. From the portions of his book 
which deal with sumptuary and economic conditions, 
it is easy to infer an England in which a vast army 
of drones " polled and shaved " the workers ; wealthy 
men with swarms of idle retainers ; vagabonds who 
would not dig and were not at all ashamed to beg ; 
and in this host of the unproductive, he expressly 
includes the " so great and so idle company of priests 
and religious men as they call them." 

This last item is made peculiarly significant by the 
extreme restriction of the number of priests in Utopia 
— thirteen of them only in every city, who are " of 
exceeding holiness, being so few." Quite evidently, 
there is in More's mind no disparagement of the 
priestly office, but the contrary; yet a very strong 
conviction that the multiplication of the " religious " 
is in every way demoralising. At the same time there 
is none of that extravagant condemnation suggested, 



THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 19 

in which the later enthusiasts for Reformation were 
wont to indulge. 

The whole section of the Utopia which touches on re- 
ligion strikes the note which one would expect — of toler- 
ation for all opinions provided that they are expressed 
with decency and not actually immoral in tendency. 
More held with Erasmus and Colet that the intricacies 
of doctrine are not essential, provided that the cardinal 
facts are realised ; for the Utopians condemn those 
who deny the Deity and the future life. At the same 
time the traveller Raphael Hythlodey is obviously of 
opinion that they were fully justified in suppressing 
the zealous Christian, whose " word in season " was too 
sulphurous for the public peace. That is the real 
explanation of the apparent contradiction between the 
Reformer More's theory of tolerance and the Lord 
Chancellor More's practice of persecution. The 
Peasants' War had come in the interval ; and the 
heretics on whom he laid stern hands were those whose 
language was violent and their theories anarchical, 
at least prima facie. A high standard of personal 
morality ; a large toleration for divergences on 
unessential points ; a rejection of grossly materialistic 
accretions and palpable abuses; a contempt for the 
uncritical and super-subtle logomachy of the schools ; a 
desire to welcome light, and to spread knowledge, all 
things being conducted with a due regard to public 
order and discipline, — these were the common 
characteristics of the scholar-reformers. 

On the critical side, these views found their weightiest 
expression in the edition of the New Testament which 
Erasmus published at Basel in 1516. The work was 
his application of the principle which he had learned 



20 CRANMER 

eighteen years before from Colet ; of going to the Greek 
to find out what the evangelists and apostles really wrote. 
Erasmus issued a Greek text with introductions and 
with his own new Latin translation beside it. Textual 
criticism was in its infancy, and he was never by any 
means a master of Greek scholarship ; the text and 
translation were both a long way from perfection ; 
but the publication broke up the stereotyped tradition 
which had regarded the Vulgate as verbally inspired, 
and a great step was taken in developing among 
the younger generation the practice of studying the 
Scriptures themselves in preference to the commentaries 
of the doctors. That practice had been initiated at 
Oxford by Colet, and was carried to Cambridge by 
Erasmus himself, who had gone there as Professor of 
Greek in 1511, under the patronage of Warham, Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, and of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. 
There can be little doubt that Cranmer, then at Cam- 
bridge, and about twenty-two years of age, fell under 
the influence of the great scholar ; though there is no 
record of any personal intercourse between them. 

How matters stood with the more definitely 
religious side of the movement may be seen from 
Colet's career at this time. Sporadic examples of 
Lollardry, and, on the part of men of the old school, 
such as Fitzjames, Bishop of London, some alarm at 
the new-fangled methods of Colet himself and his 
associates and disciples, combined to interest the king 
and Convocation in the extirpation of heresy ; to which 
particular end that assembly was summoned at the 
beginning of 1512. The proceedings, however, show 
clearly enough that the alarm did not extend to ecclesi- 
astics of any intellectual eminence. Colet himself 



THE SCHOLARS' MOVEMENT 21 

was appointed to preach the opening sermon ; prosecu- 
tions for heresy diminished instead of increasing ; and 
an attempt on the part of Fitzjames to have the dean 
punished as a heretic was ignominiously snuffed out by 
an archbishop who was on eminently good terms with 
Erasmus. 

This sermon really amounted to a programme of the 
Reformation as desired by Colet — a process of curing 
heresy by common sense and right living, instead of 
the favourite prescription of cautery. Primarily it 
was an indictment of the secular and worldly way 
of life prevalent among the clergy ; the pursuit of 
promotion, of highly-paid benefices, of pluralities ; the 
legal greed of the ecclesiastical courts ; the devotion to 
secular occupations ; things for which a remedy could 
be found if the clergy, from the bishops down, would 
merely exert themselves in their own persons to adopt 
something like the standard which they were in a,ny 
case bound to profess. The moral was quite clear. If 
the clergy set an example of spiritual living, very little 
more would be heard of heresy, whereof the exciting 
cause was usually to be found in a comparison between 
the way of life of the apostles and that of their 
successors, greatly to the disparagement of the latter. 
The dean was plain-spoken and straightforward, and 
did not shirk applying home-truths to the greatest, 
from Wolsey down; and therefore what he did not 
say may be put to the credit of his fellow-churchmen. 
So that it is to be noted that the temptations to which 
he charges them with yielding are not those of the 
flesh and the devil, but of the world. If the 
immoralities so freely attributed more particularly 
to the regular clergy by the advanced Reformers had 



22 CRANMER 

been half so flagrant as has commonly been alleged, it 
is hardly conceivable that Colet would have abstained 
from strong expression on the subject. 

Here, then, is the note of the Reformation which 
was actually in steady progress ; before Luther lifted 
up his voice, and Pope Leo by taking up the challenge 
and resisting the movement converted its development 
into a partisan struggle, of creeds. For the knell of 
the old stubborn and wilful ignorance was already 
being tolled. There was indeed little sign that the 
ecclesiastical magnates intended to withdraw from 
State affairs when Wolsey was the king's chief 
counsellor; and for many a year to come the 
Tunstals and Gardiners were to be active politicians. 
But already among the men who were Collet's con- 
temporaries or seniors all the most distinguished 
were men of character and advocates of educational 
progress, such as Warham and Fisher, and of younger 
men, Gardiner and Latimer and Tunstal ; the 
universities were following the new lights rather than 
the old traditions ; Wolsey, founding Cardinal College 
at Oxford with the proceeds of suppressed monastic 
establishments of ill-repute, filled it with pupils of 
the advanced teachers; Colet in his own school of 
St. Paul's in London set the example of converting 
pedagoguy into education ; which system he thoroughly 
established before his death in 1519. 

But the outlook of a Reformation to be effected by 
sweetness and light was shattered by two Revolts, 
utterly different in character, motive, and intention ; 
that of Luther in Germany, and that of King Henry 
in England, whereby the Reformation became a 
Revolution. 



CHAPTER III 

Prologue: The Lutheran Revolt, 1517-1530 

There is an unlimited and perhaps not wholly unpro- 
fitable field of speculation open to theorists as to the 
different course which history might have taken had 
there been no Martin Luther to lead the Revolution. 
Some sort of reformation was absolutely certain to 
come. It might have been little more than an intel- 
lectual emancipation such as the Humanists initiated 
in Italy ; or a process of intelligent moral amendment 
such as the Oxford Reformers sought in England. 
When Leo x. ascended the papal throne, it may well 
have been supposed that Erasmus and those who 
thought and taught with him were going to direct 
the character of the movement. But aH— unwittingly, 
Erasmus had brought not peace but a sword. For it 
was he, as men said, who had laid the egg that Luther 
hatched, and thereof came some of the most devastat- 
ing wars that Europe has known. For good or for 
evil, on 10th December 1520, when Luther burned the 
pope's Bull condemning him, he kindled the torch 
of Revolution. When the Monk of Wittenberg took up 
the challenge of the Head of the Christian World, the 
appeal was no longer made to the wise, the learned, 
and the great ones of the earth, but to the heart of the 

23 



24 CRANMER 

people. The Reformation for Erasmus would have 
been an affair of adaptations, compromises, recognising 
that there was much to be said on both sides, much 
that was better left alone. For Luther, it was a 
warfare of truth against lies, with no unresolvable 
half-truths. With Erasmus, it was a question what men 
should be taught to believe ; with Luther, it was what 
they should be moved to feel. Luther's theology was 
not the vital part of him ; Lutheranism was not the 
vital product ; Rome, Geneva, and Oxford have influ- 
enced the structure and interpretation of creeds and 
formularies not less than Wittenberg ; but the 
passionate ardour for reality in things spiritual, the 
personal responsibility for upholding truth, the en- 
thusiasm of conscience, which translated the Reforma- 
tion from an external official revision into an inward 
regenerating force — these the modern world owes to 
Martin Luther more than to any other man. When 
the Anglican Church left Roman doctrine it borrowed 
more from Calvin or Zwingli than from Luther; the 
Huguenots of France, the Presbyterians of Scotland, 
the Puritans of England derived their theology from 
the same school ; but it was Luther who sounded the 
call to arms, Luther who first grappled with the foe 
and was not overthrown, Luther who gave revolt the 
justification of success, Luther who proclaimed the 
fundamental rule, that he must hold to the truth 
as he conceived it, though all men should be against 
him. 

But in 1517, when Leo X. found himself in want of 
funds and proposed to supply himself by the method 
of selling Indulgences, no one was thinking of revolt. 
The theory of Indulgences had, indeed, been held up to 



THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 25 

derision, but that was a small matter — the temporal 
potentates had no objection to them, and merely 
haggled with his Holiness as to the share they were 
to have out of the collection. It was only when 
Tetzel was about to appear in Saxony that protest was 
made by Professor Martin Luther, who nailed up his 
ninety-three theses against Indulgences on the church 
door ; which proceeding derived unexpected effect from 
the fact that the Elector of Saxony acted upon it and 
forbade Tetzel to enter his dominions. 

During the three years following, events moved 
more quickly than the papal court recognised. To 
Leo, the Wittenberg monk seemed to be merely an 
unimportant upstart, who might have to be suppressed 
sooner or later. But Luther himself, having once 
taken the plunge and openly opposed Rome, found 
his opposition intensifying. He became alive to the 
fact that the theology which he had imbibed from 
St. Augustine could not, in many important particulars, 
be brought into harmony with Roman teaching ; and he 
further discovered that it was for maintaining pre- 
cisely these same Augustinian tenets, in the main, that 
Wiclif and Huss had been condemned. The conclusion 
was clear. Wiclif and Huss were certainly right; 
therefore the Church which had condemned them 
for heresy was certainly wrong, and its authority 
naught. 

When matters reached this point, it seemed time to 
repress so manifest a heretic ; and Luther heard that a 
Bull was about to be issued against him. But he had 
very thoroughly made up his mind. He had already 
appealed to the authority of a General Council; he 
now answered by an attack on the papal authority, 



26 CRANMER 

which was practically an invitation to the secular 
powers to assert their own independence of papal 
jurisdiction, and to stop the flow of revenue from their 
territories into the papal coffers. 

The appeal touched no small proportion of the 
German princes ; and the cry of " Germany for the 
Germans " was a telling one, when unsupported 
doctrinal theses might have been viewed with suffi- 
cient coldness. But two immediate questions arose — 
How would the Elector Frederic of Saxony take it ? 
and How would the newly made Emperor Charles v. 
take it? 

It was certainly not likely that the Emperor would 
take the anti-papal line. But the Elector was prob- 
ably the most universally respected prince in Europe, 
and it was only due to his own flat refusal of the 
purple that Charles had been elected Emperor in his 
stead in 1519. Fortunately for Luther, Frederic was 
not only an eminently cool-headed and honourable 
man ; he was also a friend of the New Learning, who 
held Erasmus in high esteem. Erasmus had pelted 
papal and priestly pretensions with ridicule for many 
a year, and he was obviously in sympathy with what 
was at least primarily an attack on papal and priestly 
pretensions, though conducted after a fashion very 
different from his own. Frederic consulted him, and 
his advice was that, at any rate, protection should be 
extended to Luther. 

The Bull condemning Luther arrived, and forthwith 
Luther burned it publicly (December 10). By that 
act he threw away the scabbard; the sword he had 
drawn against Rome could never be sheathed again. 

An Imperial Diet was about to assemble at Worms, 



THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 27 

and the pope addressed to Charles a letter inviting 
him to crush the heretic. But the mind of the Diet 
was divided. There might be few enough of the 
nobles who cared about the doctrines of Transub- 
stantiation or Justification ; but besides a creditable 
bias in favour of giving a man fair play and an open 
hearing, there were numbers of them in whom the 
national spirit had been roused, who were indignant 
at papal and ecclesiastical encroachments. A safe- 
conduct was granted to Luther. He came, knowing 
that he was bearing his life in his hand, for a papal 
safe-conduct had availed nothing to protect Huss. He 
came to take his stand finally, to refuse to retract 
a word, to hurl defiance at the pope under the eyes of 
Christendom, to declare the fallibility of popes and 
even councils, to deny the authority of a priesthood 
to stand between man and his Maker. 

But although Luther was, so to speak, the incarnation 
of the revolt, he was not a pioneer but a leader ; not a 
prophet standing alone, but at once the herald and the 
captain of battalions. Had there been treachery at 
Worms, it would assuredly have been followed promptly 
by armed insurrection ; not, it may be, strong enough 
to have held out for long, but quite sufficiently 
threatening to give the papal party pause. Popular 
sentiment and national sentiment were both on his 
side, in spite of emperor and princes. The defiance 
did not carry the Diet with him, but it destroyed all 
prospect of a solid antagonism. His life was so 
seriously in danger, that, as a measure of protection, 
the Elector deliberately kidnapped him when he was 
leaving, and concealed him in a Thuringian castle ; 
but if he had fallen, many a life would have paid for 



28 CRANMER 

his. The spirit of resistance was roused; and it is 
hardly too much to say that if Luther had died in 
1521, nine-tenths of his work would have been already 
accomplished. The word had been spoken for which 
half Christendom was waiting. 

It was perfectly evident at Worms that public senti- 
ment was with Luther. But the young Emperor's 
political designs placed him on the pope's side ; he 
made a treaty with the papal Nuncio; and an edict 
against Luther was drawn up, approved by those of 
the Electors present in Worms without the formality 
of discussion, and issued. Frederic had already left, 
perceiving that he could not influence the result. 

It is a matter of some little importance to observe 
how youthful at this date were the princes at the head 
of the leading nations. Henry of England was in his 
thirtieth year; Francis of France in his twenty- 
seventh; Charles, lord, by inheritance, of Spain, of 
Austria, and of the Netherlands, and head of the 
Empire by election, was not yet one-and-twenty. 
Of the three, Francis at least was thirsting for martial 
achievements, for which his appetite had been whetted 
by the famous victory of Marignano in 1515. Henry 
had dreams of recovering the French provinces ; while 
his great minister, Wolsey, aspired to the popedom. 
Charles and Francis were rivals in Italy, and the papal 
alliance was of great value to the former. 

At this stage then — 1521 — it was by no means agree- 
able to the schemes of Charles, of Henry, or of Henry's 
minister to support any attack on the papacy. The 
voice of Charles was given against Luther. Henry, 
who prided himself on his theological capacity, wrote 
a book against the Reformer's doctrine, in return for 



THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 29 

which Leo bestowed on him the complimentary title 
of "Defender of the Faith." In the meantime, how- 
ever, the bulk of the people of North Germany took 
their stand with Luther and the Elector of Saxony ; 
and Erasmus, on behalf of the New Learning, had 
declared himself, up to a certain point, on the same 
side. Charles had no inclination to push his support 
of the pope to the extent of creating a German civil 
war ; and, for the time, the Lutheran problem was in 
effect left to simmer. Luther himself, hidden away 
in his Thuringian retreat, was preparing that great 
weapon of the German Reformation, his translation of 
the Bible. 

The religious question, however, was greatly com- 
plicated by social problems. As it had befallen in the 
past in England, so now in Germany the grievances of 
the peasantry were mixed up with the reform of the 
Church. Extreme teachers arose, such as Carlstadt and 
Mtinzer, who incited the peasants to rebellion, while 
they preached anti-papal doctrines. From them 
derived those extreme reformers who in England 
were classified as Anabaptists ; and from their pro- 
ceedings, and the appalling bloodshed attending the 
" Peasants' War," came that reaction which affected 
so many of the best minds in England, and turned the 
author of the Utopia into a hammer of heretics. 

Luther himself, emerging from his compulsory 
seclusion, gave no support to the peasants. Great and 
genuine as their grievances were, Luther's theory was 
entirely antagonistic to the idea of revolt against civil 
authority; nor was he by any means in favour of 
encouraging a breach between the governing powers 
and the movement which he had originated. But it 



3 o CRANMER 

was a matter of course that his opponents should lay 
at his door the responsibility for all events growing 
out of that movement. 

The Diet of Worms, in fact, meant the alliance of 
Charles, Leo, and Henry, though the last was inactive. 
But before the year was out, Leo died, and Wolsey 
was much disturbed by finding that Charles did not 
push his candidature for the papacy. Leo's successor, 
Adrian, proposed great things in the restoration of 
discipline ; but he met with stolid resistance, and died 
in 1523 without having accomplished anything. By 
this time, Francis had lost much ground ; Charles was 
no longer so anxious about the English alliance ; and 
Wolsey's personal ambition, as well as his confidence 
in the Emperor's good faith, received a rude shock, 
when the Cardinal Giulio de Medici was elected to the 
popedom as Clement VII. 

Clement had been very much on the Spanish side 
hitherto; but the progress of Charles's power began 
to be alarming. To have the ambitions of Francis 
checked was one thing ; to become the Emperor's puppet 
was another. The danger became the greater when, 
in 1525, Francis met with the disaster of Pavia, the 
occasion of the celebrated phrase, "All is lost save 
honour." The French king fell a prisoner into his 
rival's hands. Charles, with whom negotiations had 
for some time been carried on with a view to his 
marriage with the Princess Mary of England, practi- 
cally broke with Henry by marrying the Infanta of 
Portugal instead. 

This change of relations had momentous results. 
Whether Henry was already anxious to replace 
Catherine of Aragon by Anne Boleyn is not abso- 



THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 31 

lutely certain; but it was about this time that he 
began to develop qualms of conscience as to the 
validity of his marriage with Catherine, a scrupu- 
losity which had not been aroused while he was on 
friendly terms with her Imperial nephew. Before he 
had fairly brought his problem before Clement, Charles 
had virtually acquired control of the papal policy : 
since the pope could not be persuaded to gratify 
Henry, Henry gradually arrived at the point of defy- 
ing the papal authority ; and hence arose the breach 
with Rome. 

At first, however, in 1526, the effect was not to 
render Henry favourable to the Reformation, since at 
first no unfriendliness to Clement was involved. In 
the immediate result Clement turned against Charles ; 
the Emperor was led to come to terms with his 
Lutheran subjects, and found himself at war with 
the pope. 

The Diet of the Empire was held at Spires in 
1526. The great Elector, Frederic of Saxony, had 
just died. The outcome of the Diet, however, was 
altogether favourable to the reforming party; the 
Emperor in effect, through his brother Ferdinand, 
withdrawing the anti-Lutheran edict of Worms, by 
assenting to the general proposition that the several 
States of the empire should act upon it or not as they 
individually thought fit ; or, in the more pious formula 
of the decree, " as each thought it could answer it to 
God and the Emperor." The underlying theory was 
afterwards crystallised in the phrase, " Cujus regio, 
ejus religio." 

This calling of a truce between the followers of the 
rival religious schools in Germany effected for the time 



32 CRANMER 

being a harmony of obedience to the Emperor. Clement 
was to pay the penalty for attempting to turn against 
Charles. In the beginning of 1527 a German army, 
mostly composed of self-styled Lutherans and under 
the command of the redoubtable Lutheran general, 
Frundsberg, crossed the Alps, marched upon Rome, 
sacked the Holy City as it had not been sacked since 
the time of Alaric, and held the pontiff in a virtual 
thraldom. 

By 1529, however, Charles was desirous of having 
Clement favourably disposed, and with at least the 
appearance of being a free agent. He made up the 
quarrel, though with a comfortable certainty that the 
pope would not neglect his interests, and began again 
to turn his attention to the practicability of suppress- 
ing the Lutheran movement. The anti- Lutheran 
princes of Germany were eager, and the second Diet 
of Spires reverted to the position taken up at Worms. 
The protest of the other party earned for them the 
title of "Protestants," which was for a long time to 
come to be the accepted name of all who resisted 
papal pretensions. 

The resistance of the Protestant princes prevented 
the effective carrying out of repressive measures as 
the result of the Diet; and in 1530 a fresh Diet, at 
which the Emperor was present, was held at Augsburg. 
A decree was now issued forbidding the teaching of 
Protestant doctrines, accompanied, however, by an 
Imperial promise that a General Council should be 
called to decide religious questions. Nevertheless, 
the Protestants were by no means prepared to accept 
this position, and, in the immediate expectation of 
war, banded themselves together in the League of 



THE LUTHERAN REVOLT 33 

Schmalkald. But the imminence of the struggle was 
averted by Turkish aggression, which made it neces- 
sary for all parties to agree to a temporary modus 
Vivendi. The civil war was postponed till after the 
death of Luther, nearly sixteen years later. 

From the time when Luther nailed up his theses 
against Tetzel on the church door, the Lutheran 
doctrines were steadily formulating and spreading. 
Melanchthon, the wise scholar, was early joined to the 
Wittenberg professor, refining and moderating. At 
the same time Zwingli was laying at Zurich the 
foundations of the Swiss school of reformers, char- 
acterised by less mysticism, and, it may be, by a 
sterner logic than the German school. From the first, 
the two groups did not greatly love one another ; and 
as time passed, and the diversities between them 
became more marked, their mutual amenities were to 
be matched only by the anti- Roman diatribes of each. 
During this first period, however, they stood united 
against the pope ; and the foreigners flocking to 
Zurich as well as to Wittenberg absorbed the more 
Puritan ideas, which Calvin was to develop and 
systematise a few years later. The immunity of the 
Lutherans and the independence of the Swiss gave an 
asylum to ecclesiastical rebels from other lands, who 
were safe among them for many a year before Eng- 
land would allow them to raise their voices within her 
coasts. 

In 1530 was drawn up the Confession of Augsburg, 
which was the German Protestants' confession of 
faith. It was the first great expression of a standard 
of faith other than that of Rome. It was tentative, 
not final ; but it serves as a landmark, a dividing line, 
3 



34 CRANMER 

besides showing the inevitable trend of opinion when 
once a severance from Rome should be effected. Pro- 
testantism had announced itself as a system, not a 
mere negation. It had also definitely carried itself 
beyond the limits of that intellectual and moral 
revision to which Erasmus and More had pinned 
their faith. 



CHAPTER IV 

A Tender Conscience: 1503-1529 

In its earlier stage, as we have seen, the movement for 
Reformation in England had taken its rise to a great 
extent among men who stood for culture, order, and 
development. They contemplated no schism and no 
revolution, but a practical application of fundamental 
principles to the removal of palpable abuses. It had 
been their task to educate intelligent opinion to a 
recognition of the need both for reform and for order. 
On the Continent, Luther, with a shrewder insight it 
may be, and without the opportunity for steady edu- 
cative work, found himself forced into a much more 
revolutionary and undoubtedly to him much more con- 
genial attitude of open war with the existing system. 
But neither the wit and learning of an Erasmus nor 
the passionate appeal to truth against falsehood of a 
Luther were to control the changes in England. They 
were to be the direct outcome of the matrimonial pro- 
clivities of a monarch whose capacity for discovering 
the identity of the dictates of conscience and conveni- 
ence is quite one of the most surprising phenomena of 
history. 

Alliance with the Spanish Crown had been a leading 
feature of the policy of Henry vn. ; and to that end 

35 



36 CRANMER 

his elder son Prince Arthur had been wedded to 
Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and 
Isabella. But the death of the prince destroyed the 
plan ; till the difficulty was met by the proposal that 
the widow should be married to Prince Henry, now 
heir to the English throne. The Church, however, 
forbade the marriage of any man to his deceased 
brother's wife. But Julius II., the pope of the day, 
was ready to give his assistance, and to grant a dis- 
pensation making the marriage lawful ; and the new 
contract was carried out. 

The validity of the process was formally recognised 
but secretly doubted at the time. The English king 
was not altogether sorry to have a loophole for break- 
ing the alliance by challenging the marriage if Euro- 
pean complications should render such a step profitable ; 
and the prince, at his instigation, signed a sort of 
protest which might be produced later on if occasion 
demanded it. However, the dispensation was granted, 
the marriage took effect, and Henry and Catherine 
lived as lawful man and wife for many years ; children 
being born to them, of whom one only survived, to 
become known in after days as Queen Mary of Eng- 
land. 

In justification of the dispensation, it was declared 
that the first marriage had not been carried beyond 
the stage of ceremonial completion, and therefore had 
been only technical and formal. The dissolution of a 
marriage under such circumstances being accounted no 
breach of the moral law, it was generally held that so 
far a dispensation treating it as of no effect was legiti- 
mate. But the dispensation issued was absolute, not 
limited by any condition as to the first marriage being 



A TENDER CONSCIENCE 37 

incomplete ; a claim being thus asserted to set aside 
what was recognised as the moral law, and to sanction 
a breach of it. 

So long then as it was convenient to maintain the 
validity of the marriage between Henry and Catherine, 
it was easy to argue that in any case the pope had 
assumed the moral responsibility for the whole affair, 
while there was no appeal from his judgment as to its 
ecclesiastical legality; and at any rate, if any cavils 
were raised, the moral point could be set aside by the 
assertion that the first marriage had been purely 
formal. But when it became convenient to set the 
marriage aside, it could be argued that the dispensa- 
tion, by claiming to abrogate the moral law, was 
invalidated altogether ; that the formal nature of the 
first marriage could not be maintained in face of the 
form of the dispensation ; and that the pope could not 
relieve the parties to the contract of their responsi- 
bility for continuing in a relation contrary to the 
divine law. 

When Martin Luther faced and defied the papal 
authority, King Henry took the field against him with 
a book which earned for him from the pope the title 
of Defender of the Faith. The Spanish alliance was 
in full favour at the time; Charles was the queen's 
nephew ; to challenge the authority of the pope then 
would have been ipso facto to call in question the 
validity of the marriage with Catherine, as the king 
saw shrewdly enough ; and he maintained that 
authority with proportionate vigour. Sir Thomas 
More, who was clearly in doubt as to the degree of 
authority to be attributed to the pope, was even per- 
suaded by Henry to examine the question afresh ; 



38 CRANMER 

whereby, unfortunately for himself, he was converted 
to the view then prevailing in the royal mind ; with 
the result that, being a thoroughly sincere person, 
he could not be reconverted when the royal mind 
changed. 

Before long, however, the political situation shifted ; 
so did the personal. As early as 1522, Wolsey's senti- 
ments towards the Spanish alliance had been modified 
by the failure of Charles V. to support him as candi- 
date for the papacy. Another papal election in the 
ensuing year confirmed the change of view. After the 
battle of Pavia in 1525, the Emperor showed that he 
intended to work out his own policy on the Continent 
without consideration for Henry, broke off the scheme 
by which he was to marry the young Princess Mary, 
and married the Portuguese Infanta instead. 

Also, Mary herself was the only living child of the 
marriage, and there was now no prospect of Catherine 
having a son ; so that there was very grave^ danger of 
a renewal of the wars of succession which had so 
recently devastated England. 

Also, the king's eye had been taken by Anne Boleyn, 
a young maid of honour to the queen. 

The combination of circumstances aroused Henry's 
slumbering conscience. Supposing after all his mar- 
riage was no marriage ? As long as he believed, and 
his wife believed, in its validity, no one, of course, 
could hold them seriously guilty for having acted on 
the belief ; but if one of them came to doubt it, con- 
science clearly demanded the thorough investigation 
of the question. It was even possible that a really 
tender conscience might refuse to be set at rest by any 
pronouncement, however authoritative, which did not 



A TENDER CONSCIENCE 39 

positively confirm the doubts. The train of argument 
is easy to follow out. In the long-run, if conscience 
was to be appeased, an authoritative announcement 
would have to be procured against the marriage. 

To begin with, the king and his great minister were 
in convenient agreement. As yet there was no ques- 
tion of challenging papal authority generally ; that 
would not have fallen within the range of Wolsey's 
schemes, as he was still ambitious of acquiring the 
popedom, and had no mind to see it shorn of any of 
its powers. The immediate purpose was to invite the 
present pope to declare that his predecessor had gone 
beyond his authority — to affirm, in short, that the 
decision of one pope might be revised by a successor : 
to the end that the marriage might be annulled. 

The attitude of the chief actors and of the general 
public on the question is interesting. To Catherine, 
from every imaginable point of view, the proposition 
was intolerable : it was a ruse to get rid of her, and 
nothing else, the king's unlawful desires being the 
motive. Henry for his part was willing to be quit of 
her on political grounds ; he was more than willing to 
be rid of her on personal grounds ; and he may even 
have persuaded himself that he desired it on consci- 
entious grounds. The Cardinal desired it for reasons 
of State. There were many men who honestly held 
that the marriage had been inadmissible on any pre- 
text ; but even of these not a few were of opinion that 
a greater wrong was involved in invalidating than in 
maintaining it in form. The people at large sympa- 
thised with the queen, and regarded the whole scheme 
as the work of the Cardinal, and as standing utterly 
self -condemned in consequence. The pope was anxious 



40 CRANMER 

to conciliate Henry, but more anxious to conciliate the 
Emperor, while he was also very much afraid of any 
step derogatory to his own claims. 

The earlier stages of the intriguing which went on 
are obscure. When the question was first mooted, the 
king declared that his one wish was to be certified 
that his marriage really was legitimate; and it is 
tolerably certain that Archbishop Warham, Fisher of 
Rochester, and others were deceived. A plan by which 
the archbishops and the cardinal were to cite Henry 
before them for living with his brother's widow fell 
through. So did the surprisingly audacious suggestion 
that Catherine should " enter religion," and the king 
have a dispensation for a new marriage without rais- 
ing the question of the validity of the previous one 
at all. Finally, the pope was persuaded to appoint 
a Commission, consisting of Wolsey and Cardinal 
Campeggio, to try the case ; but Campeggio's instruc- 
tions were entirely obstructive ; and after a long series 
of checks and delays, Clement in 1529 revoked the 
whole case to Rome. 

Henry was an adept in finding scapegoats; and 
his anger fell upon Wolsey, whose power was torn 
from him ruthlessly. But matters were serious. It 
was evident that Clement would not carry out Henry's 
wishes, however much he might profess his desire to 
do so ; in spite of some plain speaking by Stephen 
Gardiner, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, who 
hinted, not obscurely, that if the pope could not see his 
way, England might cease to recognise the necessity 
for a pope. 

Here then the turning-point was reached. Hitherto 
the utmost that had been contemplated by any large 



A TENDER CONSCIENCE 41 

or influential body of opinion had been some sort of 
moral reformation, an attempt to elevate the tone of 
the clergy, and to suppress obviously corrupt and 
corrupting usages. Hitherto there had been no 
desire for a definite breach with Rome, or assertion of 
independence, but only for a constitutional limitation 
of her supremacy. Now the king was realising that 
nothing short of independence was likely to bring him 
the satisfaction of his desires on which he had set 
his heart ; a large section of the clergy, including such 
men as Gardiner, were ready to go with him. Among 
laymen, hostility to the clerical organisation was 
on the increase, and Lutheran doctrines were being 
regarded with diminishing suspicion. As a great 
ecclesiastic, Wolsey's unpopularity had intensified 
anti-clerical feeling ; and his downfall was the signal 
for a new and pronounced policy to be set in motion. 



CHAPTER V 

The King's Instruments 

It was at this stage that greatness began to be thrust 
upon Thomas Cranmer. 

Hitherto the future archbishop's life had been 
essentially academic in character. Born in 1487, the 
son of a Nottinghamshire gentleman of no great 
estate, he went up to Jesus College, Cambridge — 
a recent foundation — at the age of fourteen, after a 
school career which he recalled with little satisfaction. 
The schoolmaster, we gather, was a bully, and may 
very well have intensified the boy's natural timidity. 
At Cambridge, Cranmer took to his books, and in course 
of time achieved a Fellowship in 1511 ; in which year 
Erasmus began to teach there. Hitherto the young 
man had followed the usual course of studying the 
works of the schoolmen ; now, the arrival of the 
apostle of the New Learning turned his mind to more 
attractive and enlightening branches of scholarship. 
There was also a brief matrimonial episode; he lost 
his Fellowship by marrying a wife, who died a year 
later. He was then re-elected to his Fellowship, and 
took Orders not long afterwards. The publication in 
1516 of the edition of the Greek Testament by 
Erasmus was followed by a devotion on Cranmer's 

42 



THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 43 

part to the study of Scripture, and from that time 
onward till the fateful year 1529 his career was 
studious, uneventful, and only in the most strictly 
academical sense distinguished. 

There, reading, lecturing, annotating, analysing, 
storing up learning, living a stainless and untroubled 
life, he would have remained to the end of his days, 
had fate permitted. But fate did not permit. A 
chance phrase in a chance conversation brought the 
retiring scholar under the royal notice ; and no 
monarch has ever been endowed with a keener eye or 
a shrewder judgment in discovering the instruments 
most perfectly adapted to his requirements. The 
scholar was drawn from his cloister, plunged into the 
whirl of half-understood political intrigue, and forced 
to be a statesman when nature had intended him for 
a college don. Almost without warning he found laid 
on his shoulders the responsibility for steering the 
Church through the stormiest seas. From Henry's 
point of view, no better selection could have been 
made; but Cranmer himself must have felt many a 
time that there was a strong element of "cursed 
spite " in the case. 

In July 1529 the pope revoked the cause between 
Henry and Catherine to Rome. The king left London 
for Waltham Abbey ; having in his train Edward 
Foxe, Provost of King's, and Stephen Gardiner, 
Master of Trinity Hall, who had both been much 
employed in his affairs, while the latter had used 
strong language on his behalf to Pope Clement, as 
already narrated. It so happened that these two met 
Cranmer at the house where they were guests. The 
divorce was, of course, the subject in all men's mouths. 



44 CRANMER 

The idea of appealing to the universities at large for 
an opinion on the merits of the case had already been 
mooted and acted upon, and Cranmer was one of the 
doctors selected at Cambridge to examine the question. 
Naturally it became the subject of conversation; with 
the result that Cranmer propounded the momentous 
suggestion that the appeal to the universities and 
their answer would be an adequate ground for the 
king to act upon directly. 

Now the original idea had probably amounted only 
to this: that a clear expression of opinion from the 
learned experts of Europe would be very difficult for 
the pope to resist. But the essence of Cranmer's 
proposal was that if the decision of the learned on 
the point of conscience was in his favour, Henry would 
be entitled to dispense with the judgment of Rome on 
the matter altogether. It was in effect a denial of 
the pope's claim to authority as the ultimate court 
of appeal; a virtual assertion of the supremacy of 
national as against papal jurisdiction. It gave Henry 
precisely the keynote he wanted. Gardiner, in Rome, 
had hinted broadly enough at rebellion, but at re- 
bellion naked and unashamed. He did not deny the 
papal authority, but threatened to ignore it. The new 
position was quite different ; since it affirmed the 
higher authority of the sovereign. Once the king's 
own judgment was clear on the doubtful problem, he 
was free to act. An appeal to the universities would 
clear his judgment, — an end which he had failed to 
obtain by appealing to Rome, — and then the dictation 
of Rome would be worthless. Papal authority was 
reduced to the level of an expert opinion; ultimate 
judgment reverted to the king. 



THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 45 

It was a curious piece of irony that Gardiner should 
have been one of the men to bring Cranmer under the 
royal notice; but so it was. The conversation was 
reported to Henry, and Henry at once perceived 
possibilities. The man who had thus seized " the 
right sow by the ear," committing himself to a 
sufficiently far-reaching doctrine of royal supremacy 
as a mere matter of academic theory and in indubit- 
able good faith, might clearly be most useful. Cranmer, 
reluctantly enough in all probability, was summoned 
to the king's presence, and started on his career as the 
king's mouthpiece. 

Cranmer was endowed with a brain not lacking in 
subtlety ; but it was the subtlety of the scholar, not 
that of the man of affairs. In his dealings with men 
he was habitually guileless and unsuspicious ; his 
natural inclination was to think well of his neighbour. 
The king wanted Cranmer to believe in him, and he 
laid himself out with that lordly geniality and impos- 
ing frankness which he could always command, to 
captivate the Cambridge scholar, and convince him 
of his own purity of motive and self-sacrificing con- 
scientiousness. Then he invited his paragon of doctors 
to put his views of the situation into a book. During 
the writing it was as well that the writer should dwell 
in a congenial atmosphere; such an atmosphere as 
might be found in the house of the Earl of Wiltshire. 
The earl was the father of Anne Boleyn. Cranmer 
became a warm admirer of the future queen, who for 
her part continued to be his loyal friend to the last. 
It is easy to see the necessary effect on a mind like 
Cranmer's — essentially tender, trustful, responsive to 
all kindly influences. His goodwill being enlisted on 



46 CRANMER 

the side to which his judgment naturally inclined, the 
king knew that he had secured a supporter in whom 
his confidence need never fail. With men like More 
and Fisher, conscience was too independent. A 
Wolsey might be too much influenced by personal 
ambitions. Gardiner had too large a share of the 
wisdom of the serpent. But Cranmer was not 
ambitious; he was not astute; and although he was 
not likely to go against his conscience, he was of the 
type of those who take their conscience with them 
into unexpected situations. The chances were that 
if Cranmer found the royal conscience and his own 
in opposition he would think that his own had made 
a mistake. 

Henry was adroit in his arrangements. Between 
July 1529 and the end of the year, the future arch- 
bishop was chiefly engaged on his treatise about the 
divorce. Then a fresh embassy was despatched 
to Rome ; the Earl of Wiltshire was at its head, and 
Cranmer was in his train. He did not return till 
September 1530; and before many months of the next 
year had elapsed he was despatched on an embassy to 
the Emperor, remaining abroad till, on Archbishop 
Warham's death in August 1532, he was sent for to be 
consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, being installed 
in the primacy on March 30, 1533. Thus he would 
seem to have been but a few months in England 
during the three years 1530, 1531, and 1532; while 
throughout his sojourn abroad he was surrounded by 
anti-papal influences calculated to strengthen his readi- 
ness to support the king in any reforming measures he 
might see fit to adopt. 

The year 1529 is a very important landmark. It 



THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 47 

was the year in which the king discovered Cranmer, 
to provide his policy with an air of learning and piety ; 
in which he acquired Thomas Cromwell, to scheme, 
devise, execute, and bear the blame ; and in which he 
summoned the Parliament which was to voice the 
zealous support of a loyal nation, obediently proclaim- 
ing the wisdom and justice of the king's measures. 

If it is difficult to arrive at a just estimate of 
Cranmer's character and abilities, the difficulty with 
Thomas Cromwell is ten times greater. To Mr. 
Froude, who was a reckless devotee of force, he is a 
kind of St. Michael, leading the hosts who followed the 
banner of Truth and Righteousness to shatter the 
battalions of Falsehood and Vice ; a veritable soldier 
of God, hating evil, smiting relentlessly and fearlessly; 
a pioneer, hewing at the roots of the Roman upas 
tree. Historians of another colour liken him rather 
to Lucifer, unless such a comparison is too discourteous 
to the Prince of Darkness. For them, he was a usurer, 
a liar, a coward, a traitor, a hypocrite. Justice and 
mercy were commodities for which he had no use. 
His loyalty to the fallen Cardinal was a sham, and 
his policy was dictated exclusively by greed and 
ambition. 

It may certainly be said without hesitation that 
Mr. Froude's estimate is entirely incredible, and the 
counter-description is highly imaginative, being arrived 
at by systematically accepting every evil rumour as 
proved truth. It is not possible to transform Cromwell 
into an attractive personality or even an admirable 
one ; but on the moral side, his courage, loyalty, and 
unflinching resolution cannot in fairness be impeached, 
while his intellectual forcefulness is beyond dispute. 



48 CRANMER 

Of his origin, nothing is known for certain. Rumour 
made him the son of a blacksmith. However that may 
have been, he found his way to Italy x at an early age, 
and there became what he afterwards himself described 
as a " ruffian," probably a trooper in one of the mer- 
cenary bands attached to one or another of the nobles 
in that most unhappy land. There, morals of any kind 
were at a discount and intelligence was at a premium. 
In effect, it was a universally received maxim that if you 
had an end in view it was contemptible to shrink from 
the effective means of achieving it merely because con- 
science would be outraged. Fear of poison and of the 
assassin's dagger were leading methods of persuasion 
employed by princes and bravoes. The practices of 
the Borgias, Sforzas, Medicis, and the rest were reduced 
to principles, and enunciated by Niccolo Macchiavelli 
in the most astonishing text-book of State-craft that 
ever was penned, with the same placidly scientific 
air as if they had been a series of indisputable mathe- 
matical propositions. What startles us in the Prince 
is not the immorality and wickedness of the advice 
given to the would-be ruler of men, but the entire 
absence of shame, the apparent unconsciousness that 
there is anything at all shocking about it. It would 
seem as if the bare idea of right and wrong having 
anything to do with political objects or methods had 
never so much as crossed the great diplomatist's mind. 
The writer does indeed remark on the practical uses 
of a specious pretence of virtue in mollifying popular 

1 Dr. Brewer was not satisfied with the evidence even on this point ; 
but there seems to be no particular reason why the statement should 
have been invented, while its truth would go far to explain Cromwell's 
character and methods. 



THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 49 

prejudices, and would even convey that where there is 
really nothing more to be gained by the immoral than 
the moral course, it is perhaps better to follow the 
latter. It is also true that Macchiavelli's personal 
standard of action was that of a man of genuine 
patriotism, courage, and honour. The significant 
thing is, that such a man, a statesman of the first 
rank, a man of the finest culture and of the nicest 
taste, should have produced such a treatise as if there 
were nothing out of the common about the principles 
it laid down, and that he did so for the very good 
reason that they were in fact the everyday principles 
of his time and country. 

This was the time and country where Cromwell 
acquired his education as a man of the world; an 
adventurer with his way to make, and the will and 
the skill to make it. If the political and personal 
atmosphere were calculated to nurture sheer unmiti- 
gated cynicism, the ecclesiastical atmosphere was no 
better, for the corruption was deeper rooted, wider 
spread, and more flagrantly palpable than anywhere 
else in Europe. On the papal throne the Borgia had 
been succeeded first by a soldier-pope, and then by the 
Medici, whose refined paganism was hardly more 
appropriate in the Vicar of Christ than had been the 
blackguardism of Alexander vi. It was his visit 
to Italy that first shocked Martin Luther into a full 
consciousness of the reality of the general corruption. 
Nothing but intensity of devotion could have saved a 
young man in Cromwell's position from acquiring in 
that country a supreme contempt for ecclesiastical 
pretensions, and a total disbelief in ecclesiastical 
morality. 
4 



50 CRANMER 

Another lesson, easily learnt and laid to heart by an 
adventurer of the future vicar-general's capacity, was 
the supreme importance to any one with his way to 
make of becoming a thorough man of business ; and 
that for two very good reasons. He must acquire 
wealth, and he must become important to some person 
of higher importance, if he was to climb the ladder. 
Wealth he wanted, not for the sake of ease or luxury 
or hoarding, but as an instrument of power ; and he 
acquired it without superfluous scrupulosity as to 
methods. He had, it would seem, no more hesitation 
in receiving than in giving a bribe ; but when he 
entered on his later career as the hammer of the 
Church and the nobility, he distinguished. From 
those who were in the way, he took no bribes to let 
them stay ; but he extracted large sums as the price 
of mercy from those whom he could have afforded to 
ignore. In the days of his obscurity, he added money- 
lending to practice in the lower branches of the 
legal profession. In the course of time he obtained 
a seat in Parliament, succeeded in attaching himself to 
the great Cardinal's entourage, acquired his confidence, 
and found remunerative employment as his agent in 
the ordering of his colleges and the manipulation of his 
finances. It is not suggested that he defrauded the 
Cardinal himself, but he was very commonly charged 
with defrauding other parties concerned in the trans- 
actions with which he was entrusted. 

In October 1529 the Cardinal fell. Cromwell stood 
by him stubbornly and publicly. His detractors to- 
day declare that this was due solely to his astute 
perception that in this course lay the best chance of 
saving his own skin ; but the game was a singularly 



THE KING'S INSTRUMENTS 51 

audacious one to play, and at the time he was given 
full credit for exceptionally meritorious loyalty. He 
elected to stand by his master and face the storm — in 
his own characteristic phrase, " to make or mar." 
When even the gracious Thomas More, succeeding 
Wolsey as Chancellor, could not, if the Chronicler Hall 
is to be credited, refrain from insulting the fallen min- 
ister, Cromwell boldly took up the cudgels publicly in 
Parliament ; while characteristically trusting in private 
to the sedative influence of coin judiciously laid out. 

How he obtained the king's personal favour is 
uncertain. According to the most favourable view, 
Henry's admiration for his loyalty won him ; but the 
true explanation probably lies in the king's unfailing 
perception of the best instruments for his own 
purposes. He had already discovered in Cranmer 
the combination of learning, pliancy, and virtue which 
he wanted for some of his objects; and in Cromwell he 
perceived the servant who would be at once absolutely 
faithful and absolutely unscrupulous. It is likely 
enough that the secretary seized the first opportunity 
of propounding to the king the plan of openly setting 
the papacy at defiance ; but that could hardly have 
served to bring him into favour, as he had been fore- 
stalled in the idea by Cranmer. Whatever the reason 
was, however, the early months of 1530 saw Thomas 
Cromwell thoroughly installed in Henry's favour, 
instead of being crushed as his many ill-wishers had 
undoubtedly hoped and expected. As yet, however, 
the time had not arrived for making full use either of 
Cranmer or Cromwell. The moderate men were to 
have their turn ; More was to initiate reform, and 
Warham was to lend it his authority. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Supeeme Head: 1529-1534 

There are four aspects in which the Reformation as 
carried out by Henry requires to be considered — his 
attitude to the pope ; to ecclesiastical administration ; 
to clerical emoluments ; and to doctrine. 

In respect of the first, from 1529 we observe a rapid 
advance towards the flat denial of papal authority ; in 
which the king is supported with a whole heart by 
Cranmer, and by the majority of the laity ; and with 
some hesitation by the generality of the clergy, at 
least up to the eleventh hour. 

On the ecclesiastical organisation, the royal claim 
to supreme control is pressed with steadily increas- 
ing severity, but always under protest from the 
clergy, with the exception of Cranmer and some 
others. 

On ecclesiastical emoluments, the king's clutches are 
laid with merciless rigour, upon pretexts more or less 
specious ; beginning with exactions by way of fine for 
illegalities, and proceeding to wholesale confiscation. 
Throughout, the king appears to have the moral 
support of Cranmer and a very few others of the 
clergy, of so many of the laity as are enriched by the 
spoils, and of a section of honest but fanatical re- 

52 



THE SUPREME HEAD 53 

formers ; in the later stages at least, popular sentiment, 
outside Parliament, is with the victims. 

In respect of doctrine, the line is clear. Accepted 
catholic doctrine is maintained, only the most flagrant 
vulgar distortions of it being checked. Heresies 
preached by men who had been imbibing the teaching 
of the German and Swiss reformers are repressed, and 
the preachers subjected to the extreme penalties of the 
law. Cranmer is allowed, indeed, to import a mild 
Lutheran flavour even into official utterances, but the 
flavour is very mild. On all leading points there is no 
apparent departure from the doctrines of the old 
Church. 

In fine, while it inevitably followed from the 
measures taken that the authority of the ecclesiastical 
body was undermined by its subordination to the 
secular sovereign, while its wealth was appropriated 
largely to secular uses, and while the papacy was set 
at defiance, the whole scope and aim of the Reforma- 
tion as contemplated by Henry and his instruments 
was not doctrinal but political, and incidentally in 
some degree social. It was a part of that larger 
scheme which had absolutism for its goal ; and in that 
scheme, the function of Cromwell was active achieve- 
ment, that of Cranmer passive acceptance. 

The challenge to the papal authority takes form 
primarily in the continuation of the story of the 
divorce, and secondarily in the enactments resisting 
specific papal claims in respect of church government 
and ecclesiastical emoluments ; merging finally in the 
claim of Royal Supremacy. 

The divorce was, in fact, the real end the king had 
in view; he had personally, as far as we can judge, no 



54 CRANMER 

desire for a severance from Rome if that specific object 
could be attained without it. Among the clergy, 
however, including many of those who were most 
emphatically catholic and orthodox, there was a 
strong antagonism to the domination of the pope, 
creating a large party favourable to the divorce as a 
crucial point in the contest ; while Cromwell was 
probably much more definitely resolved than his 
master on getting rid of the papal claim in order to 
assert the royal claim the more decisively. Fisher of 
Rochester from the beginning, and Sir Thomas More 
in a very short time, realised and dreaded the com- 
pleteness of the coming breach, and the secular inten- 
tion of its promoters ; but the very men whose names 
in later years were most intimately associated with 
the Romanist reaction were at this period prominent 
and even violent supporters of the king's policy. 

As being the most decisive factor in breaking off 
the Roman connection, we may deal first with the 
divorce proceedings. The principle at stake having 
been explained, their progress does not require to be 
followed in great detail. The judgments of the uni- 
versities were obtained during the early months of 
1530 ; they were indecisive ; they were very far from 
unanimous ; and it is by no means easy to affirm that 
they were on the whole more favourable to one party 
than to the other. It was, moreover, notorious that 
every available kind of outside pressure was brought 
to bear on both sides, and that the judgments delivered 
were largely influenced by issues which, judicially 
speaking, had nothing to do with the real point. The 
king's party, however, declared that the justice of his 
cause was now conclusively demonstrated. But no 



THE SUPREME HEAD 55 

results followed. Cranmer at the papal court could 
get nothing tangible. Sent abroad again in 1531, he 
spent a year for the most part among the German 
Lutherans, and some emphatic expressions of opinion 
were obtained from German and Swiss reformers ; but 
the pope would do nothing, and Catherine stoutly 
refused to acknowledge any adverse judgment but the 
pope's own. In August 1532 Archbishop Warham died ; 
the king fixed on Cranmer as his successor, and also 
made up his own mind to a decisive step. He married 
Anne privately, probably in November. Cranmer after 
long delay returned in January, and was installed in 
the archbishopric at the end of March (1533). 

This marks a decisive stage. Papal Bulls for Cran- 
mer's appointment had been duly obtained ; but, as a 
preliminary to installation, he took an unprecedented 
course. The king had recently discovered that all 
bishops owned a divided allegiance, in view of the 
separate vows they had to take of loyalty to the pope 
and loyalty to the Crown. Cranmer seized the oppor- 
tunity to declare for the Crown ; prefacing his oath to 
the pope with a declaration that he would only hold it 
binding so far as it did not clash with his oath to the 
king. 

The installation was immediately followed by the 
passing of the great Act in Restraint of Appeals, which 
was in fact a national abjuration of papal jurisdiction. 
That it was passed with a direct personal object, as a 
sort of royal relief bill, does not alter the fact that it 
was in itself a dignified and constitutional declaration 
of an independence which in theory had never been 
wholly relinquished, though in practice it had been in 
habitual abeyance. The Act affirmed the final char- 



56 CRANMER 

acter of the jurisdiction of the spiritual courts within 
the realm of England, forbidding appeals from them 
to Rome. It expressed directly the position which 
Cranmer had himself propounded when he was still 
no more than a Cambridge scholar. 

It remained only to add the finishing touch. The 
new archbishop proceeded at once to ask leave to 
hold a court to settle the king's matter ; and leave was 
given in terms which conveyed with sufficient emphasis 
the subordinate position which the primate had accepted. 
While the arrangements were going forward, Convoca- 
tion was called upon to deliver its opinion on the val- 
idity of the dispensation ; and gave its verdict in the 
king's favour. Cranmer called his court; the queen 
refused to attend, and was declared contumacious ; on 
May 23 judgment was given voiding the marriage. 
Five days later, Cranmer proceeded to declare the 
marriage with Anne Boleyn lawful and valid, and her 
public coronation followed immediately. 

The protest of Rome was met by both king and 
archbishop appealing from the pope to the higher 
authority of the next General Council ; the strongest 
opponents of the divorce among the bishops admitting 
that the principle of doing so was valid. Nevertheless, 
for the space of another year there still seemed to be a 
possibility of reconciliation ; since there was a party 
at Rome which dreaded the effects of a complete sever- 
ance from England. On the other hand, the Emperor's 
party was urgent, and its urgency carried the day. 
The king might recede from the directly anti-papal 
enactments of his Parliament ; his friends at the papal 
court were hopeful of obtaining a secure promise that 
if he submitted his case to the papal court he should 



THE SUPREME HEAD 57 

have a decision entirely in his favour. The Imperial- 
ists, realising the danger of the scale being turned 
against them if delays were prolonged, hurried matters 
forward ; and the door of reconciliation, such as it was, 
was finalty closed by the definite pronouncement in 
March 1534, that the marriage with Catherine was 
good and valid, and the marriage with Anne illegal. 

In England, in the meantime, the anti-papal and anti- 
ecclesiastical policies had been at work side by side. 

In the former category there had as yet been only 
one important Act, besides the decisive one in Restraint 
of Appeals ; and this, the first Act in Restraint of 
Annates, had emanated directly from the clergy 
themselves. It had been the custom for Rome to 
demand annates, otherwise first - fruits or the first 
year's income, from every bishop or archbishop on 
appointment; and this impost was a very cruel one, 
especially of course in cases where a See was vacated 
by death or for other reasons soon after occupation. 
Gardiner, recently appointed to Winchester, had been 
obliged to borrow heavily to meet the papal claims. 
An Act was accordingly passed (April 1532), allowing 
only a tax of 5 per cent. ; and further laying down 
that even if the pope refused the Bulls, the consecra- 
tions should proceed and be held valid. 

The Act was in form one for the relief of the clergy 
from a papal impost ; but the king had no great 
interest in relieving the clergy — as he proved not long 
afterwards by having the annates diverted by Act of 
Parliament to his own use. At the time, however, he 
seems to have intended the Act chiefly as a weapon to 
be held in reserve and launched against the pope at 
his discretion. The pope himself was only allowed to 



58 CRANMER 

know that there was something brewing; what pre- 
cisely the something was he could not discover till 
after the divorce was completed. 

But between the close of 1529 and the final rupture 
with Rome, the attack on clerical abuses, clerical 
privileges, clerical emoluments, and clerical authority 
was carried on with increasing vigour. 

It began with the opening of Parliament in 
November 1529. Three bills were brought in, which 
did in fact deal with real abuses, but were recognised 
by Bishop Fisher at the outset as being specious 
precursors of an attack on the Church, at least in the 
case of the Probate and Mortuaries Acts, which were in 
restraint of the excessive fees enforced by the clerical 
courts. The third, an Act against Pluralities and Non- 
residence, was in part a blow at papal nominees, and 
would have been generally admitted to be a really sound 
reform, but for the schedule of exceptions, which was 
too conveniently favourable to the promoters of the bill. 

In the following year (1530) Cranmer was abroad 
on the embassy to the pope, and the business of 
obtaining the opinion of the universities was in 
active operation. Cromwell, now in the king's personal 
service, was rising in influence; but Henry was 
ostensibly occupied a good deal with the process of 
heresy-hunting and suppressing the literature inspired 
by the Reformers, who were issuing it from German 
printing presses. 

At the close of the year, however, almost im- 
mediately on the death of Wolsey, he announced that 
the clergy and the Commons had brought themselves 
into a parlous position under the Statute of Praemunire, 
by accepting the legatine authority of the late 



THE SUPREME HEAD 59 

Cardinal. The mere fact that he had himself been 
responsible did not weigh with the monarch; who 
impressed upon the clergy the advisability of their 
making haste to purchase pardon lest they should be 
subjected to a more stringent process of forfeiture. 
Convocation, meeting in January (1531), recognised 
the wisdom of submission, and offered above a 
hundred thousand pounds — an enormous sum in those 
days. This, however, did not satisfy the king. He 
proceeded — and here perhaps the hand of Cromwell 
may be detected — to demand also a formal recognition 
of his own authority in matters ecclesiastical, includ- 
ing the acknowledgment that the "king is the only 
Protector and Supreme Head of the Church and 
clergy of England." It was indeed implied that no 
new claim was being put forward ; that there was 
here nothing beyond the formal statement of the 
authority which had been asserted and implicitly 
acknowledged for many generations. Nevertheless, it 
was not without grave misgivings that the demand was 
received ; nay, in its primary form it was rejected. 
The aged Archbishop Warham, however, found a door of 
escape for his flock from what had seemed a dangerous 
impasse, by introducing the saving clause, " so far as the 
laws of Christ permit." In this form the declaration 
was put to the Upper House of Convocation. No one 
spoke. "Silence," the archbishop warned them, "is 
assent " ; a voice replied, " Then are we all silent " — and 
so the declaration was passed. One point, however, must 
have remained obvious — that it would be exceedingly 
difficult to argue that any claim the king might put for- 
ward on the strength of the general declaration could 
be held void on the strength of the saving clause. 



60 CRANMER 

What may have been the precise object of the king 
and his advisers in requiring this declaration, it is 
difficult to say ; since the notion that it contained any 
new claim was expressly repudiated. Apparently it 
was put forward merely as a feeler, for a very much 
more serious move was to follow ere long. 

In January 1532 a direct attack was opened by the 
Commons, who presented a " Supplication " against 
the " Ordinaries." It began by attributing the alarm- 
ing spread of heretical opinions and literature to the 
unsatisfactory methods of the ecclesiastical courts, 
and from this it worked up to the position that the 
Church framed and put in force canons and regulations 
contrary to royal authority, good government, and 
justice ; further petitioning that no canons should 
have force until they had received the royal assent. 
Incidentally great stress was laid on the abuses in the 
ecclesiastical courts, although the advocates of the 
clergy inclined to maintain that these were, at the worst, 
no whit more scandalous than those of the lay courts. 

Convocation was actively engaged in preparing new 
canons and regulations for discipline and the removal 
of abuses when the thunderbolt fell. Some delay had 
been caused by a quarrel between the king and the 
Commons over the " Bill of Wards," intended to 
legalise sundry exactions on the part of the Lords. 
The Commons, touched at their tender point — their 
pockets — refused the Wards Bill; being no more 
minded to submit to the exactions of the Lords than 
to those of the clergy ; a position which seems to be 
logical, but is apt to be contemned as proving that 
sordid motives alone weighed seriously with them. It 
would, however, appear that to have submitted in the 



THE SUPREME HEAD 61 

one case, while clamouring for redress in the other, would 
have been both illogical and pusillanimous. However, 
the effect was that the " Supplication against the Ordin- 
aries " was not presented in Convocation till April ; 
when it was accompanied by a demand for an answer. 

The answer given, generally attributed to Gardiner 
(now Bishop of Winchester), was lacking neither in 
dignity nor in astuteness. It maintained that the 
accusations made were general, not specific, so that it 
was impossible to set about disproving them. In 
respect of the principle, it was affirmed that the 
Church was bound to make laws which could not be 
submitted to lay authority ; and that the laws of the 
land and the laws of the Church were both derived from 
the same source, namely, the Word of God, and could 
not really conflict ; while the king was entreated with 
the customary compliments to prove himself once 
more, as he had so signally done in the past, the 
Protector of the Church. 

Which answer the king condemned as " slender," and 
demanded something more solid. Also he signified his 
displeasure with Gardiner for the part he had taken. 
The bishop's reply was an effective though diplomatic 
argument ad hominem, appealing to the king's own 
book against Luther as the locus classicus in which 
the case for the Church was presented convincingly, 
and implying that he could not help remaining con- 
vinced thereby until His Majesty should bring to light 
the new data by which he had been induced to change 
his mind. It does not seem at all impossible that 
Gardiner's display of independence at this juncture was 
responsible some months later for the selection in his 
place of Cranmer to succeed Warham in the primacy. 



62 CRANMER 

Convocation returned a second answer, in which 
they expressed their readiness that, in consideration of 
the king's extraordinary learning and wisdom, no 
future regulations they might make should be enforced 
on the laity, unless the royal assent had been given ; 
and that in respect of existing canons, any which 
were suspected of being against the laws of the realm 
should be examined and modified. Finally, however, 
they were forced to assent to the two articles which 
constituted what was known as the " Submission of the 
Clergy " ; promising to enact no new constitutions or 
canons except with the royal assent, and to submit to 
a Commission consisting of the king with sixteen of 
the clergy and sixteen laymen such of the existing 
canons as were held to be prejudicial. The remaining 
canons to continue in force. 

This Submission of the clergy was a real act of 
surrender. There never had been, indeed, any practi- 
cal power of promulgating constitutions which could 
override the ordinary law ; but short of that the 
Church had claimed and exercised the right of enforc- 
ing her spiritual or quasi -spiritual legislation without 
submitting it to the approbation of any temporal 
authority. That right was now wiped out. At the 
same time it is possible to acquire the erroneous 
impression that the right of spiritual legislation was 
transferred to the State ; whereas in form a right of 
veto only was conceded to the Crown. Whatever the 
practical effect might be when the crown happened to 
be worn by a Henry viii., there was here no recogni- 
tion, expressed or implied, of parliamentary control. 

Nevertheless, it was felt that the ecclesiastical 
organisation had suffered a very serious blow. Thomas 



THE SUPREME HEAD 63 

More, most loyal of lay Churchmen, felt that his posi- 
tion as Chancellor, irksome from the beginning, was 
now impossible, and he resigned. Warham, already 
so far enfeebled with age that Stokesley, Bishop of 
London, had of late generally acted for him, appears 
to have been quite broken down, and died some four 
months later, leaving as his last public utterance a 
protest against all the measures which had been aimed 
against the authority of the pope or the privileges of 
the Church. The selection of Cranmer to succeed him 
showed that independence of spirit was not a charac- 
teristic which the king desired in his primate. 

This attack on the hitherto acknowledged con- 
stitutional rights of Convocation and the authority of 
the spiritual courts was accompanied by two measures 
directed against what were for the most part genuine 
abuses. The first of these dealt with the curious 
institution known as " benefit of clergy," under which 
all " clerks " charged with offences against the law 
could have their cases withdrawn from the lay courts, 
and dealt with by the "Ordinaries." Originally this 
had amounted to something- very like substituting 
trial by jury for trial by ordeal; but in course of 
time it had come to mean that anyone who could 
read or write escaped the hand of the king's law by 
claiming benefit of clergy, and very commonly got off 
with very inadequate penalties. Considering the 
extravagant barbarity of some of the punishments 
for minor offences then in vogue, it may well be 
doubted whether crime was really encouraged by 
ecclesiastical leniency; but the double system was 
clearly improper. For the time all that was done 
was to limit the benefit to the ordained clergy. The 



•' 



64 CRANMER 

second Act was a kind of appendix to the existing 
Statutes of Mortmain, being intended as a check on 
the transfer of property to the Church, and a counter- 
move to the ingenious devices by which the Mortmain 
Statutes had been evaded. 

Down to the close of 1533 the " Reformation," as 
here described, was a process of clearing the ground. 
The Act in Restraint of Appeals was a formal renuncia- 
tion of papal allegiance ; the marriage with Anne 
Boleyn, and the judgments on " the king's matter," 
delivered by the new archbishop, were practical 
demonstrations of the same principle, which the 
Annates Act had carried into the field of finance, or 
papal demands on the clergy. But while the Church's 
independence of the pope was being asserted, her 
dependence on the king was being emphasised and 
increased by the declaration of the royal supremacy, 
and by the submission of the clergy ; and at the same 
time a series of Acts, which it was as yet reasonable to 
describe as being "in restraint of abuses," had been 
aimed at the authority and the emoluments of the 
ecclesiastical organisation. The whole was but the 
prelude to an assertion of the complete subordination 
of the Church to the Crown, of the Spirituality to the 
Temporal power, which amounted to a revolution ; and 
to an application of the powers thus asserted, after a 
fashion wholly tyrannical, by methods grossly immoral. 
Abuses and corruptions there were, grave and plentiful 
enough ; even for confiscations within reasonable limits 
strong arguments could be adduced. But for whole- 
sale spoliation and humiliation, such as Henry and 
Cromwell enforced and Cranmer accepted, it is not 
possible in the records to find any adequate excuse ; 



THE SUPREME HEAD 65 

except by the simple process of swallowing all the 
evidence on one side, however tainted, and ignoring all 
the evidence on the other, however independent. 

The gain both to Church and State of once for all 
asserting complete independence of Rome, few will be 
found to dispute. The political need of abolishing 
anything like an imperium in imperio, of asserting 
the control of the nation in its temporal capacity as a 
State over the nation in its spiritual capacity as a 
Church, may be freely recognised. The justice of / 
diverting a part of the vast wealth of a great organ- / 
isation, accumulated on hypotheses largely ignored in 
its use, may be challenged, but may also be frankly 
defended. But the first was achieved by sacrificing 
an innocent and defenceless woman ; the third was 
carried past all bounds, on the strength of evidence 
acquired by corruption and violence; and as to the 
second, it was carried through, in part at least, by 
threats of confiscation, and by calling into play retro- 
spectively a law which the authorities, including the 
king himself, had deliberately set on one side. As to 
Cranmer's own share in the matter, he upheld the 
principle, but was not responsible for the method. 
Nevertheless, no predecessor of his in the Metropolitan 
See would have thus deliberately ranged himself on 
the side of the State against his Order. There is no 
sort of reason to doubt that in so doing he acted 
honestly according to his convictions ; but it is scarcely 
surprising that the whole-hearted advocates of the 
claims of his Order find it difficult to speak of him 
otherwise than as a traitor to it. Still, to find in 
his action a demonstration of servility is certainly 
unreasonable, though it may not be unnatural. 
5 



CHAPTEK VII 

The Hand of Cromwell: 1534-1540 

The parliamentary measures of 1534 were chiefly 
devoted to confirming previous declarations with in- 
creased vigour. The Submission of the Clergy and 
the Restraint of Appeals were combined in one Act. 
Moreover, according to the form of the Act, the 
enforcement of the existing canons and constitutions 
was to be carried out at the peril of the clergy ; 
inasmuch as it was left to them to prove that such 
ordinances were not contrary to the prerogative and 
the public good, whereas the intention of the original 
"submission" clearly was that each one should be 
held valid until it should be challenged specifically. 
The Annates Act was renewed, accompanied by a 
formal appropriation to the king of the right to make 
all appointments to bishoprics, abbeys, etc., under the 
form of a conge d'elire ; and all remaining pecuniary 
claims of Rome not wiped out thereby were abolished 
by the Act against " Peter Pence." The spring session 
concluded with the Act of Succession, excluding Mary, 
and fixing the succession on the offspring of Anne 
Boleyn ; Elizabeth being by this time some six months 
old. 

This Act was to be used to strike at two of the first 



THE HAND OF CROMWELL 67 

men iu the country — More, whose European reputa- 
tion ranked above that of any other Englishman 
living, and Fisher of Rochester, whose fame for 
character and learning rendered him incomparably 
the most admirable representative of the clergy. He, 
like Warham, had misliked Henry's marriage with 
Catherine, but had still more misliked the divorce. 
His was the voice which had been most boldly raised 
in defence of the ancient privileges of the Church. 
Almost, though not wholly, alone among the bishops, 
he had maintained the authority of Rome, as More 
also maintained it. 

And now the whole country was required to swear 
to the Act of Succession ; but the form of the oath 
prescribed, after the Act was passed, involved also a 
preamble abjuring Rome and affirming the Royal 
Supremacy. It might well be maintained that the 
main part of the oath was a necessity, to put all 
possible dispute out of question in the future ; and 
even those who would uphold Mary's claim in theory 
might be required and expected to pledge themselves 
in act to Elizabeth ; but it was obvious that to uphold 
papal authority in the Church, or to deny the possi- 
bility of recognising a layman as her head, could 
not reasonably be perverted into treason, or even 
into disloyalty. 

Now it is one thing to demand of all subjects of the 
realm that they shall obey the law, and another to 
compel them on pain of being held guilty of treason 
to swear that they agree with the principle on which 
the law is based. It is not possible to suppose 
that the oath was constructed with any other object 
than the creation of an excuse for the humiliation or 



68 CRANMER 

destruction of all who questioned the Royal Supremacy. 
More and Fisher were both ready to swear to the suc- 
cession, but not to the Supremacy; and so were the 
monks of the London Charterhouse, the Observants of 
Greenwich, and the Brigittines of Brentford. Cranmer 
was innocent enough to try to persuade the king to be 
content without insisting on the preamble — he had 
not realised that the object in view was to get the 
oath refused, not to get it accepted. The recalci- 
trants were imprisoned. Of the monks who protested, 
some gave way. In November the Act was renewed, 
this time including the form of the oath, retrospectively, 
to give some colour of law to the penalty heretofore 
illegally enforced. An Act was passed declaring the 
king to be Supreme Head (which as yet had only been 
affirmed by Convocation); a new Annates Bill was 
passed, appropriating to the Crown the first-fruits 
which had been withdrawn by the previous Acts 
from Rome ; and a new Treasons Act was passed, by 
which the expression of opinion, or even the refusal 
to express an opinion, was converted into high treason, 
hitherto confined, by the Act of Edward ill., to specific 
actions against the king. 

More and Fisher remained stubborn; some of the 
monks also recanted their submission ; and the result 
was a series of quasi-judicial murders which shocked 
Christendom not a little, but at the same time testi- 
fied conclusively to the complete ruthlessness of the 
methods the king was resolved to adopt. 

There is no doubt that this ruthlessness was by no 
means to Cranmer's liking. Himself of a gentle and 
forgiving disposition, he never relinquished an amiable 
belief that he could persuade recalcitrants of all sorts 



THE HAND OF CROMWELL 69 

to see the error of their ways, and an amiable desire to 
persuade the king to grant pardon on terms of sub- 
mission. Unhappily his amiability was coupled with 
an entire lack of self-reliance, which to more virile 
minds assumes the aspect of a slavish obsequiousness 
to the ruling powers. Yet the man was no self-seeking 
hypocrite, no adventurer like Cromwell, no intriguer 
like half the courtiers of the day. But to all appear- 
ance, whenever he was brought into contact with a 
really masterful personality, such as Henry's or Crom- 
well's, he lost the power of independent judgment, and 
found himself impelled to surrender to the dominating 
force. Endowed with a singularly subtle intellect, he 
could maintain a thesis against any of his clerical 
brethren — academically ; but he almost lost belief in 
any thesis which was flatly against the king's opinion. 
Within a year of the execution of More and Fisher, 
this pitiful weakness in the primate was to exhibit a 
melancholy exemplification. Catherine was hardly in 
her grave when her successor on the throne was struck 
down to make way for a new queen. The truth of 
that cruel tragedy no man knows. There are only two 
positive facts ascertainable — that Anne's husband had 
chosen her successor before he struck at her ; and that 
the charge against her came as a cruel shock to the 
archbishop. But the king professed himself convinced 
of her guilt, on what evidence we do not know ; and 
Cranmer pronounced against her, on what evidence we 
do not know ; not only declaring her guilty, but pro- 
nouncing the very marriage to have been invalid. On 
the theory of Cranmer's character just laid down, it 
may be doubted whether he held the evidence itself to 
be convincing, but it is likely that he believed the 



70 CRANMER 

king's opinion to be honest, and assumed, according to 
his wont, that the king must be in the right. 

An identical spirit was shown four years later by 
Cranmer when Cromwell's day of retribution arrived. 
The archbishop could not bring himself to believe that 
one whom he had held in such regard and esteem had 
been guilty of the enormities laid to his charge ; yet 
he could not stake his opinion against the king's 
infallibility. Henry could not be unjust ; the guilt 
must be real. The frame of mind is not at all 
incredible. There are vast numbers of people who 
will reckon any evidence, short of ocular demonstra- 
tion, as of a feather's weight when the authority they 
recognise declares against it. Henry had an extra- 
ordinary power of fascinating nearly everyone with 
whom he came in contact ; Cranmer he seems to have 
entirely magnetised. 

The deaths of Anne and of Cromwell were both 
merely casual incidents of the Reformation — illus- 
trations of the temper of Henry, Cranmer, and others, 
but without serious influence on the course of events. 
The queen had ceased to be important after the validity 
of her marriage was recognised ; the secretary had 
accomplished the work for which he was needed, 
before his master dispensed with his services. It was 
in 1535, with his appointment as Vicar-General, and 
vicegerent of the king in matters ecclesiastical, that 
those services were called into full play. The 
" Treasons " Act of the previous year had already 
enabled him to initiate a reign of terror by flooding 
the country with spies and informers, whose reports 
acquired a dangerous significance from the Act. Now 
he was enabled to open a campaign of spoliation. 



THE HAND OF CROMWELL yi 

Monastic institutions under any circumstances are 
open to grave objections, though it would be absurd to 
speak of them as altogether bad. Given a band of 
enthusiasts, bound to resist the allurements of the 
world and the flesh for themselves, and to do battle 
with the devil for others : some misapprehensions as 
to legitimate pleasures, some errors as to the method 
of conducting the war with evil, do not destroy the 
value of a self-denying example. But the system is 
by its nature peculiarly liable to abuse. If moral 
enthusiasm fades, principles and practice soon find 
themselves in contradiction, and the corrupting influ- 
ence of misconduct is intensified. Vows taken before 
the novice realises what is involved in them become a 
burden too great to be borne, and the flavour of stolen 
fruit is proverbial. From the earliest times monks have 
been anathematised for abusing their profession ; the 
tongue of scandal at all times loved to dwell upon 
their misdeeds ; and there is a tolerably strong pre- 
sumption that the tongue of scandal was not without 
excuse. The legal " benefit of clergy " protecting them 
from the penalties suffered by the lay criminal had a 
moral counterpart or complement in the abuse of 
sacerdotal authority, providing both the opportunity 
for ill - doing, and comparative immunity from its 
results. It is inconceivable that communities which 
enriched their exchequer by the exhibition of sham 
relics and the concoction of fraudulent miracles should 
have escaped a serious blunting of the moral sense ; 
and though the tale of such miracles and relics was no 
doubt exaggerated, at least so far as concerned wilful 
deception, their general prevalence is beyond dispute. 
The inducement to what may euphemistically be called 



72 CRANMER 

lack of discipline must have been immense throughout 
the whole class of " exempt " monasteries — houses, 
that is, which were exempt from episcopal visitation, 
and were practically left to themselves. Comfortable 
doctrines on the subject of absolution and penance, 
however illegitimate and contrary to the true teaching 
as understood by the learned and the pious, made vice 
easy and attractive wherever authority was lax ; and 
wherever abbots or priors were easy-going or worse, 
the moral tone of the entire house inevitably sank to 
the lowest point. These things are not questions of 
evidence ; they are obvious inherent tendencies of the 
system. A house which was well ruled would be an 
admirable landlord, a generous dispenser of charity, a 
beacon of piety : ill-ruled, it became corrupt itself, and 
a source of corruption and superstition. 

What the real condition of the average monastery or 
convent was at this time, the evidence does not show 
at all conclusively ; nor is it here possible to set that 
evidence forth. There is no practical alternative 
between detailed treatment which demands volumes 
and summary treatment which forbids details. To 
select fragments as examples and base a conclusion 
upon them, must mean only that the historian, having 
formed his judgment, selects for report the details 
which square with it most obviously. A summary 
expression of opinion is all that is here possible. 

We have, then, the general proposition that except 
at periods when a passionate wave of spiritual emotion 
was sweeping large numbers of enthusiasts into the 
life of self-denial, the inevitable tendency of the system 
was to laxity of discipline, producing widespread cor- 
ruption of practice and abuse of privilege. Hence 



THE HAND OF CROMWELL 73 

there is a preliminary presumption that in the early 
half of the sixteenth century the general tone and 
standard of the religious houses was low. That many 
of them played deliberately upon popular credulity for 
their own enrichment is certain. The probability that 
any large proportion of the inmates were greatly 
occupied with industry, good works, or the pursuit of 
learning, is exceedingly small. In some cases it can 
hardly be doubted that so-called religious houses had 
degenerated into hotbeds of vice. On the other hand, 
the fate of the Observants and the Carthusians of the 
London Charterhouse proves that many a monk was 
no less ready to face martyrdom than the stoutest of 
Protestants ; that there were houses where the monastic 
ideal was devoutly and nobly upheld. 

Now, if the foregoing paragraphs give a correct 
account, it is tolerably clear that, whatever the con- 
dition of the monasteries at the time, the system was 
a bad one, and its destruction was desirable in the 
interest of religion and of the State. But the justifi- 
cation of the manner of the suppression depends 
entirely on the strength of the case against the con- 
dition of the monasteries at that particular time. 

In the reign of Henry vn., Cardinal Morton had 
found occasion to use strong language with regard to 
particular religious houses and their heads. Later, 
when Wolsey was in power, he, too, had spoken words 
of warning; more, he had commenced a process of 
suppression, abolishing several houses, and appropri- 
ating their incomes to educational uses, as, for instance, 
for the foundation of Cardinal College (Christ Church) 
at Oxford. When Tudor ministers pronounced words 
of warning, they were not infrequently intended as 



74 CRANMER 

forcible hints that penalties might be commuted for 
cash, rather than as expressions of judicial opinion ; 
and guilt which was utilised to provide funds for the 
minister's schemes or his master's coffers may have 
been rather less guilty than it was called. Moreover, 
for centuries the secular clergy had been jealous of the 
" regulars," and had nourished a genuine grievance 
against them — partly because of an assumption of 
superiority which was galling, and partly because of 
an absorption of ecclesiastical property which was 
more than galling — so that the diversion of monastic 
funds to other ecclesiastical purposes had not been 
regarded with general disfavour : the bias was towards 
finding the excuses for such diversion adequate. 

Cromwell's scheme, however, was no development of 
Wolsey's. He proposed to divert the wealth of the 
monasteries into the royal exchequer. According to 
one theory of his aim, he perceived that they were 
dens of iniquity, instituted an inquiry which more 
than justified his worst anticipations, crushed the evil 
thing for the public good, and restored to the State 
the revenues which had been so grossly abused by its 
trustees. According to the other extreme theory, the 
whole business was a piece of sheer robbery utterly 
without excuse. The fact appears to be that there 
was a really strong case for the abolition of the 
system, and ample ground for confiscation in indi- 
vidual cases ; but that the evidence on which whole- 
sale spoliation was said to be justified was never 
made public, and had been gathered by methods which 
would in any case have deprived it of real weight; 
while the use to which the spoils were put was wholly 
iniquitous. 



THE HAND OF CROMWELL 75 

The process was simple. The king as Supreme 
Head delegated to Cromwell as his Vicar-General full 
powers to act and appoint commissioners at his 
pleasure ; on the basis of interpreting the Supremacy 
as an unqualified autocracy. The Vicar-General in- 
stituted a visitation by creatures of his own — Leigh, 
Layton, Ap Rice, Petre, London — who bullied the 
monks, accepted confessions and informations from 
discontented inmates, treated refusals to answer 
the most insulting questions as admissions of guilt, 
and succeeded generally in collecting a vast amount 
of unsifted scandal. So much is absolutely certain 
from the letters of the commissioners. According to 
tradition, their reports, accompanied by written con- 
fessions, were put together; a "black book" of the 
damning proofs was laid before a horror-stricken 
Parliament; the monasteries were wiped out, to a 
chorus of stern applause from all right-thinking men ; 
and the reactionists in Mary's reign seized the brief 
moment of their triumph to make away with the 
record of enormities. In fact, however, while no one 
will dispute that to many — perhaps to most — honest 
men, the monasteries in bulk were anathema, the rest 
of the story is unconvincing. Hugh Latimer declared 
that when the tale of iniquity was told in Parliament 
(in February 1536) it was received with a universal 
" Down with them," which is probably true enough, 
though on the other side we are told that the House 
took much stirring before it would pass the attendant 
Act. The records, however, go to show that what 
was laid before the House was, not the evidence which 
had stopped short with the king and Cromwell, but 
broad allegations as to which His Majesty declared 



76 CRANMER 

that he had found them fully proved. Such an 
announcement was sufficient for that Parliament. As 
for the "black book," no explicit account of it is 
known till Elizabeth was on the throne ; the descrip- 
tion of its character is suspected of being mythical; 
of the lost reports and confessions nothing remains 
but some MS. summaries known as the Comperta; 
and the existing data make it hardly less likely that 
it was the Protestants who destroyed the reports 
because of the inadequacy of the evidence they con- 
tained, than that the Romanists did so because of 
what they revealed. 

The course of suppression was as follows. On 2nd 
October (1535) Leigh and Layton started on their 
visitation; precisely four months later the results of 
their investigations were laid before Parliament as 
above narrated. Admittedly their condemnation did 
not even approach being universal ; and the shortness 
of the time is sufficient proof that it would be absurd 
to call the inquiry thorough. A bill was passed, 
giving all the monasteries with less than £200 a year 
to the king, on the general hypothesis that a small 
house must be a bad house ; and the process of seizure, 
and of dispersion of the inmates, was at once com- 
menced. Meantime, Cromwell's commissioners laid 
upon the religious communities new rules and regula- 
tions, grievous to be borne, with what can only 
be regarded as the set intention of making the 
monastic life insupportable. 

The popular mind, however, did not share the 
authoritative view as to purging the land of the 
unclean thing, and a slight rising in Lincolnshire in 
the autumn was followed by a decidedly dangerous 



THE HAND OF CROMWELL 77 

movement in the North, known as the " Pilgrimage of 
Grace." This was emphatically popular in character, 
and was directed against the suppression of mon- 
asteries and other appropriations of ecclesiastical 
property. The leader, a lawyer named Aske, was 
cozened by fair words and promises ; and the gathering 
dispersed. The promises were not kept, but on the 
first sign of renewed disturbance the sternest measures 
were put in force, several examples were made in 
towns and villages, and the late leaders were put 
to death. But the whole story is significant of 
the popular attitude in the north country towards 
religious innovations, and of the unscrupulous if time- 
honoured methods adopted in quelling opposition to 
the king's designs. 

The pilgrimage served as a ready excuse for a 
fresh visitation of the North, resulting in extensive 
suppressions on the plea of complicity in the rising; 
for two years more the process was continued of 
worrying monasteries into voluntary self -extinction , 
or extracting confessions of varying veracity which 
warranted suppression; till finally in May 1539 an 
Act was passed giving all monastic property to the 
king. 

A great deal of what was thus seized the king kept 
for himself ; much he gave away, with an acute per- 
ception of benefits accruing. How the buildings fared 
for the most part, the ruins of some survive to tell. 
Yet a remnant was set aside for spiritual purposes. 
A scheme for establishing new Sees, to fill the place 
the "regulars" had occupied, was prepared; some 
new bishoprics were actually founded ; monastic 
establishments attached to some of the cathedrals, 



78 CRANMER 

as Canterbury and Durham, were really transformed 
into chapters ; and some doubt was incidentally 
thrown on the sincerity of the reproaches hurled at 
these places when the chief officers, presumably the 
worst offenders, were themselves converted into deans 
and canons. A good many of the disbanded monks 
received pensions. But taken altogether, with in- 
significant exceptions, the lands and revenues which 
had been, in however misdirected a manner, for 
centuries set apart for religious ends, were not turned 
to fresh religious channels, not devoted to education, 
not even appropriated to the use of the State, but 
absorbed to meet the too lavish expenditure of an 
extravagant monarch, the financial requirements of a 
minister whose clientele was exacting, and the greed 
of a rapacious nobility. Much that was evil, much 
that was corrupting, much that tended to foster 
demoralising superstitions, was wiped out when the 
monastic system was crushed; but the appropriation 
of the revenue to the satisfaction of private avarice 
was a robbery not so much of the Church as of the 
nation. 

The spoliation was rounded off by the generous 
Parliament of 1545-46, which bestowed upon the king — 
whose exchequer was ever in need of replenishment — 
the endowments of chantries, hospitals, and other 
similar foundations not already involved in the dis- 
solution of the monasteries. 

Before turning to the remaining question, Henry's 
attitude in matters of doctrine other than that of 
papal authority, we must take note of two further 
innovations in the exercise of the Supremacy. One 
was the claim asserted by Leigh and Layton, as 



THE HAND OF CROMWELL 79 

Cromwell's commissioners, to suspend the bishops' 
right of visitation ; the other was the invention of 
" tuning the pulpits," that is to say, of forbidding 
anyone to preach without a licence, — which was of 
course equivalent to ensuring that the licensee would 
refrain from inconvenient doctrine, — and of explicitly 
ordering the circulation from the pulpits of specific 
views as to Supremacy, papal authority, and other 
matters, and inflicting punishment for neglect of such 
orders. 

Cromwell had completed the revolution. The same 
year, 1539, saw the coping stone placed on the edifice 
of absolutism by the declaration of Parliament that 
a Royal Proclamation had the force of an Act of 
Parliament. But he was not content. He had 
resolved on cementing an alliance with the Lutheran 
princes, and the resolve proved his ruin. He trapped 
his master, whose third wife was now dead, into a 
marriage with Anne of Cleves ; and when it was too 
late to draw back, the king found he had been tricked 
as to the lady's charms. For such a matrimonial 
expert as Henry, this was too much. The marriage 
took place in January 1540 ; in June the terrible 
minister's head fell beneath the executioner's axe. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Fidei Defensoe: 1529-1547 

The movement which goes by the name of the 
Reformation, so far as we have examined it, has very 
little to do with what we are accustomed to regard 
as the great legacy of the Reformers — freedom of 
conscience. It has appeared, in fact, as a three- 
cornered contest between king, pope, and English 
clergy for the control of ecclesiastical legislation, 
revenues, and appointments. The result under Henry 
was that the pope was driven from the field, and the 
clergy submitted to the king. The submission was 
for the most part a palpable yielding to the stronger 
arm. But in the particular case of Cranmer, who 
accepted the change without reserve, and in such 
instances as his oath on consecration went spon- 
taneously beyond what had ever been demanded, there 
is no fair ground for doubting that he was acting on 
honest conviction : on a theory of the relations of 
Church and State which was essentially modern, and 
flatly opposed to that not only of the great ecclesiastics 
of the past, but also to that of at least the Swiss 
section of the Reformers. The great prelates of the 
past had claimed always as the Church's right the 
ordering of all things spiritual, and the full control 

80 



FIDEI DEFENSOR 81 

of such temporalities as they could acquire; they 
had not asserted the right to control secular matters 
in virtue of their divine office. The Calvinistic 
school of Reformers, who dominated the movement in 
Scotland, avowedly aimed at a theocracy, demanding 
for the ministry a dominant voice in the counsels of 
the State and even of the battlefield, specifically on 
the ground of their office ; differing from the Roman 
theory as claiming the functions of the Hebrew prophets 
rather than those of a priesthood. But Cranmer, though 
his doctrines changed as time passed, though in 
practical affairs he was weak and vacillating, was 
yet in this one thing entirely consistent throughout 
his career; until that last terrible month, when the 
pressing fear of imminent death drove him to the 
pitiful recantation which in the last hour of all he 
purged in martyrdom. Whatever his policy might 
be, its justification lay in the root-idea that the Church 
is subordinate to the State, that her officials are the 
officers of the sovereign, that her revenues are admin- 
istered subject to the sovereign's control and by his 
favour, and that to him absolute obedience is due. 
The sovereign, to Cranmer, meant the king, and by 
implication anyone acting by royal authority; whether 
Parliament, or a vicar-general, or an archbishop. By 
royal assent, even papal authority could be restored ; 
by the royal will it might be again cast off. Obviously, 
to all who believed in the inherent independence of 
the Church, he seemed a traitor, and his unfailing 
submission sheer cowardice ; but if once his theory is 
admitted in the abstract, Cranmer's career becomes con- 
sistent, intelligible, and distinctly more logical than that 
of the later adherents of the theory of " Non-resistance." 
6 



82 CRANMER 

But none of the three theories had anything to do 
with freedom of conscience. The Puritan divines 
were no less insistent on conf ormitjr to their standards 
than was Rome ; and the Cranmerian theory was 
equally insistent on conformity to law. Cranmer's 
personal influence, and that of many other reformers, 
was exerted in the direction of latitude, but as a 
matter of grace, not of right ; and it was a necessary 
corollary of the whole theory that conformity of 
conduct should be taken as implying conformity of 
opinion. But that any man had a right to form his 
own opinion according to the dictates of his con- 
science — a fortiori, that he had a right to preach or 
maintain such opinion — was a notion very far removed 
from any doctrine of the day, however much the 
temper of the English people might tend to encourage 
— as it has habitually done — a certain official obtuse- 
ness of hearing and vision in the guardians of the 
law. 

Now, in point of doctrine Henry had always been 
careful to proclaim himself strictly orthodox. He had 
taken up the cudgels against Luther ; he had won the 
title of Defender of the Faith ; he had no sympathy at 
all with heresy. For, however ready he might be to 
question authority which ran counter to his personal 
convenience, the authority which centred in his own 
person was by no means to be called in question. In 
most minds the challenge to authority is apt to take 
the form of asserting my right of private judgment 
while denying yours — unless yours and mine happen 
to coincide. The force of circumstances would have 
made it necessary for Henry to declare for the absolute 
nature of legitimate authority while justifying his 



FIDEI DEFENSOR 83 

revolt from Rome as a shaking off of usurped authority. 
So far as the Reformation is to be looked on as an 
appeal from authority to conscience and reason, the 
whole trend of Henry's mind was absolutely opposed 
to it. The essence of his theory was the concentration 
of authority in himself. 

From these considerations, it followed that the 
Reformation under Henry was constitutional, struc- 
tural, and financial ; also, by the suppression of the 
monasteries with their charitable or educational con- 
comitants, it was rendered social. But it was not 
religious. 

Nevertheless in certain respects it did pave the way 
for a religious reformation, that is to say, for a new 
attitude of the mind towards religious questions. 

The least important movement was towards checking 
the extravagance of rites which were in the view of 
all educated people superstitious, such as the idolatrous 
worship of shrines, images, or relics — worship, that is, 
in which the material thing tended to assume a sacred 
character, degenerating from a symbol into a fetish. 
The exposure of sham relics, the stripping of shrines, 
and the destruction of images, which accompanied the 
dissolution of the monasteries, prepared the way for a 
fiercer iconoclasm, a more sweeping hatred of the sub- 
stitution of things visible for things of the spirit. 

More important was the tendency, which did not 
begin to develop until after Cranmer's installation, to 
construct new formulae of the faith. Although these 
formulae never departed appreciably from orthodox 
Roman doctrine, they implied the recognition of un- 
certainties, and of distinctions between what is of faith 
and what is of human devising in the ordinances of 



84 CRANMER 

the Church. They admitted the existence of open 
questions ; and each restatement of catholic doctrine 
carried with it a hint of possible modification. 

And most important was the inclination, wavering 
in intensity and in the opposition rendered to it by 
the Old Catholics, to bring within general reach the 
Scriptures on which the faith was based. For it was 
certain that the reading of the Bible would set the 
minds of men upon new trains of thought; would 
awaken them to the differences between the scriptural 
foundations and the ecclesiastical superstructure; would 
suggest that the relative importance of various ordin- 
ances had become surprisingly distorted ; and that the 
difficulty of reconciling sundry ecclesiastical assump- 
tions with the words of Scripture would inevitably 
induce the challenging of the former. 

On the other side, we have more or less spasmodic 
persecution of heresy, in which it does not appear that 
the bishops displayed any greater energy than the 
king's temper for the time being demanded. It must, 
however, be observed that prior to the " Six Articles 
Act" of 1539, there were two classes of heresy pro- 
secutions: those which were strictly theological, and 
those in which heresy was identified at best with 
extravagant libels and at worst with something verg- 
ing on anarchism, to which the great peasant revolt 
in Germany— which Luther himself vigorously con- 
demned — had given a very ominous colour. When it 
is remembered that so enlightened and gentle-hearted 
a man as Sir Thomas More, the very reverse of a 
fanatic, and one of the prime movers for reform, was 
nevertheless active in his suppression of heresy during 
the years of his chancellorship, we are forced to feel 



FIDEI DEFENSOR 8$ 

that something besides mere bigotry and bloodthirsti- 
ness were at the bottom of the persecution. It seems, 
in fact, as if the course of events in Germany affected 
More and others, much as the French Revolution 
affected Burke two and a half centuries later. In 
each case we find a man far in front of most of his 
contemporaries in political imagination and reasoning 
power, not less conspicuously honest than intellectually 
brilliant, a dangerously liberal thinker and writer, 
driven into the reaction by the extravagances of a 
popular outburst which found its original motive in 
the very principles which he had previously main- 
tained. 

It was, in fact, in few cases that the extreme rigour 
of the law was enforced. The holders of the new 
opinions for the most part fled or remained abroad, 
issuing from thence their diatribes against false doc- 
trines and false pastors. The disseminators of their 
pamphlets or active preachers of heretical views far 
more often than not abjured and escaped with penance. 
Only those who refused to abjure, or after abjuring 
relapsed, suffered death ; and when these belonged to 
the sect of Anabaptists, whose theological dogmas were 
associated with communistic or antinoinian social 
theories, the victims found little sympathy even from 
such advanced reformers as Latimer. Among all the 
earlier martyrs, however, one stands pre-eminent — 
Frith, who died not for a dogma but for a principle. 
A young man, a scholar, once a pupil of Gardiner's, 
later imbued with Lutheran teachings, he actively 
disseminated those new views of the Eucharist, of 
Purgatory, and other prevalent doctrines, which were 
still held to be heretical. But when he was arraigned, 



86 CRANMER 

he dared to enunciate the great principle that whether 
his opinion were right or wrong on these matters, it 
could not be that a right opinion was a condition of 
salvation. His judges, it would seem, would fain have 
saved him ; but while he refused to yield, they had no 
power to pardon ; and Frith in England heads the 
noble roll of those who died for liberty of conscience. 
With him perished a loyal disciple, whose answer to 
questionings and persuasions was simply that as Frith 
thought so did he. 

The return to the study of the text of Scripture as 
the source and fountainhead of true doctrine had been 
initiated by Colet, and taught as a cardinal tenet by 
the disciples of Erasmus at the universities. The 
edition of the New Testament by Erasmus had prob- 
ably done more than any other work to set scholars 
at least clearing their minds of scholastic accretions. 
But at this time England was not to the fore in 
rendering the Bible in the vulgar tongue. Wiclif in 
the past had made a translation ; but a score of 
German versions had been made before there was 
another in English. At length Tyndale, moved per- 
haps by the example of Luther, produced in 1526 a 
version of the New Testament, on which our later 
renderings have been based. His book, however, was 
accompanied by annotations of a violently polemical 
order, which caused it to be generally suppressed as 
heretical. 

There is, however, no appearance of any serious 
opposition to the view that the publication of a good 
translation was desirable, though it may be ques- 
tioned whether the ecclesiastical authorities in general 
viewed the project with enthusiasm. There was a 



FIDEI DEFENSOR 87 

suspicion too widespread that the danger of ignorant 
misinterpretations was too great. Stokesley's an- 
tagonism was open and pronounced. But it was the 
darling scheme of Cranmer, whether he owed it to his 
sojourn in Germany or not ; for the Bible of Luther 
was well fitted to inspire emulation. The suppression 
of Tyndale's Bible in 1530 had been accompanied by a 
half -promise of an authorised version; but no move 
was made until Cranmer had become archbishop. The 
first Convocation in which he presided — 1534 — peti- 
tioned for a trustworthy committee of translators, at 
the same time that they petitioned for the suppression 
of heretical books ; and although the king did nothing, 
he allowed Cranmer to form a committee for the 
purpose, in which Gardiner took his share, while 
Stokesley left his untouched. 

The project in that form was shelved in 1536 by 
the appearance of Coverdale's Bible, and an injunction 
from the Vicar-General that every Church was to be 
provided with a Bible in Latin and English. Cover- 
dale's version, however, was in many respects unsatis- 
factory ; but a new edition of Tyndale's — known as 
Matthew's — freed from some of the objectionable 
features, was hailed a year later with delight by 
Cranmer, who succeeded in getting it licensed by 
Cromwell ; and in 1538, again, a new edition of 
Matthew's, revised by Coverdale, supervised by Bonner, 
with a preface by the archbishop and Cromwell's 
licence, was published under the name of the Great 
Bible — by reason of its actual size — and ordered in 
1539 to be set up in the Churches. 

Although the Great Bible failed to give general 
satisfaction, no other translation was issued in Henry's 



88 CRANMER 

reign. There was too much in it that gave an oppor- 
tunity to heretical exponents. In 1542 Convocation 
declared that a revision was needed to prevent scandal. 
A committee was again formed for the purpose, when 
the king put a stop to it by saying that he was going 
to entrust the • work to the universities — which he 
omitted to do. What the real reasons were is un- 
known. Gardiner had proposed to restore much of 
the Latin terminology, involving stereotyped ecclesias- 
tical interpretations of which it was comparatively 
easy to divest the vernacular expressions ; and Cran- 
mer is often charged with having incited Henry to 
quash the revision in consequence. This, however, is 
a mere surmise, though not without plausibility, since 
Cranmer was admittedly in advance of all but a few 
of his clerical brethren in his desire to enlarge the 
scope within which private judgment should be allowed 
free play ; and he may have preferred the version as 
it stood, to one revised in a reactionary sense. 

Cranmer, however, was not content with an English 
Bible. It was also his desire that the people should 
worship in a tongue which they understood ; but this 
could only be effected by a very gradual process. The 
noble language of the English Liturgy, as Cranmer 
shaped it, would be a sufficient monument for any 
man ; to him in chief is due the marvellous charm 
of its cadences. During Henry's reign, however, no 
very advanced stage was reached, though a most 
important first step was taken. The English Litany 
was constructed and first authorised to be sung in 
parish churches in 1544. 

Cranmer is fairly entitled to the chief credit for 
introducing both an English liturgy and the open 



FIDEI DEFENSOR 89 

Bible ; all the other powers being at best half-hearted, 
though Cromwell was entirely friendly. But in the 
matter of propagating new formulae of the faith, the 
king himself seems to have been the moving spirit. 
Henry conceived himself to be ' no mean theologian ; 
and when Rome was cast off, it seemed necessary to 
take some definite steps so as to have it thoroughly 
understood that the schism involved no disloyalty to 
catholic doctrine. 

The first of these new statements of doctrine was the 
Ten Articles " to stablish Christian quietness," in 1536. 
It is not known who actually drew them up. There is 
in them no departure from accepted catholic doctrine, 
but the hand of Cranmer is apparent in the distinction 
laid down between ordinances having the sanction of 
divine authority and those having the sanction of 
human authority only. All alike are treated as bind- 
ing, but the distinction itself implicitly conveys the 
suggestion that the latter are not necessarily immut- 
able. The " necessary " articles are — acceptance of the 
Bible and the three Creeds as the rule of faith; the 
sacraments of Baptism, Penance, and the Altar; and 
justification. In the explanation of the Eucharist, 
the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ is 
affirmed, but neither is the word Transubstantiation 
used nor the mode of the Presence set forth. It is also 
noteworthy that the other four so-called sacraments 
are omitted, their sacramental character being neither 
denied nor affirmed. The second part deals with 
images, the honour due to saints, prayers to saints, 
rites and ceremonies, and purgatory, all of which are 
to be accepted but not to be abused. 

The whole may be taken as an enlightened but 



90 CRANMER 

not an exhaustive statement of educated opinion, to 
which, so far as it went, the most orthodox op- 
ponents of Luther and Zwingli would have raised no 
objection. 

The Articles were very promptly brought into use 
by way of demonstrating the loyalty of the king to 
the old faith, when the Pilgrimage of Grace made its 
protest against innovations. 

It was apparent, however, that various controversial 
matters were left unsettled in the Ten Articles : they 
required to be supplemented. Accordingly, in the 
following year, a new committee was formed on the 
archbishop's motion, to draw up a further statement, 
under the title of the Institution of a Christian Man ; 
which came to be generally known, when published, as 
the " Bishops' Book." In covering the same ground 
as the Ten Articles, no appreciable variation was made; 
but the validity of the other four sacraments (though 
as of somewhat less authority) was now definitely 
asserted. 

The book did not receive the royal authority in the 
same way as the Articles, nor was it brought before 
Convocation. But permission to publish it was given, 
the king remarking that he had not had time to over- 
look it. Cranmer, and Foxe, Bishop of Hereford, are 
said to have done most of the work, in which, however, 
both conservative prelates like Stokesley and Gardiner, 
and those of the newer school like Latimer, Shaxton, 
and Barlow had their share, giving it their joint and 
individual approval. 

The archbishop's personal opinions were no doubt 
somewhat in advance of those of most of his colleagues, 
and he was probably sanguine of inducing Henry to 



FIDEI DEFENSOR 91 

move with him. But though Henry preserved an 
unvarying affection for his primate, and from begin- 
ning to end would never listen to a word in his dis- 
favour, Cranmer's influence never seems to have stirred 
him a hair's-breadth from any course which he pro- 
posed to himself. A deputation from the Protestant 
League of Germany came to England in 1538, and, 
unfortunately for their sympathisers in this country, 
they succeeded in annoying the king by lack of 
diplomatic artifice. The result was a reactionary 
move. In the following year the Act of the Six 
Articles was introduced. 

So far as the existing formularies — the Ten Articles 
and the Institution — went, there was nothing in the 
new Act which contravened them. But the doctrine 
of the Real Presence was now set forth explicitly in 
terms of Transubstantiation ; and at the very moment 
when the last of the monasteries were to be extin- 
guished, the permanence of all vows of celibacy and 
the general law of clerical celibacy were confirmed 
with stringency. On both points opposition to the 
German point of view was accentuated. 

Now the canon law had forbidden the secular clergy 
to marry, but they had taken no specific vow ; unions 
appear to have been very generally sanctioned in an 
informal way by custom, and of late years marriages 
had been common. Cranmer himself had married a 
German spouse, the daughter of the Lutheran Osiander, 
not long before his appointment to the archbishopric, 
and such marriages had been accounted morally valid 
without being technically recognised; while the con- 
tinental reformers had boldly set aside the whole 
theory of celibacy. Thus, while it was impossible to 



92 CRANMER 

say that the new law contradicted any existing 
pronouncement, it withdrew the latitude which was in 
effect allowed on certain points by these pronounce- 
ments, and reaffirmed what was at any rate tending 
to become a dead letter; and it applied new and 
savage penalties to transgressors. Cranmer, though 
true to his principle of obedience when the Act was 
once passed, did honestly and openly oppose its 
passage with a vigour which would have cost anyone 
else the royal favour. 

The last of the formularies of Henry's reign may be 
described as a modification of the Bishops' Book in 
accordance with the Six Articles. A committee to 
take it in hand was summoned, just before Cromwell's 
fall, but it was not till 1543 that the result of their de- 
liberations was issued in the form of the Erudition of a 
Christian Man, otherwise known as " the King's Book." 
In relation to the Six Articles, it was neither advance 
nor retrogression ; which was in some degree a victory 
for Cranmer, inasmuch as he was left almost alone in 
resisting the reactionary party who had fairly gained 
the upper hand. Latimer was not the only reforming 
bishop who had been driven from his See after the 
Six Articles. In effect, the Erudition affirmed all 
that had been laid down in the Institution, and 
added thereto Transubstantiation and the celibacy of 
the priesthood. 

Cranmer was strongly urged to give way to the 
reactionaries, and warned of Henry's probable dis- 
pleasure ; but either he knew his man better than the 
rest did, or he had a sounder courage than he is usually 
credited with. In the result, the king, perceiving that 
there was a cabal against the archbishop, promptly 



FIDEI DEFENSOR 93 

took his side, of course without withdrawing from the 
position he had previously taken up. The book was 
issued by his express authority, and received also the 
imprimatur of Convocation, which the Institution 
had lacked. 

The preliminary discussions had brought out one 
point of very considerable interest. The method of 
setting to work had been that a series of questions had 
been drawn up, mainly by the primate, and submitted 
to each member of the committee for him to answer 
according to his own judgment. A curious diversity 
had prevailed on the matter of sacraments, which 
showed conclusively that any or every ordinance 
might or might not be called a sacrament very much 
according to fancy, until a precise definition of that 
term could be formulated ; while, as before, the general 
view was that there are at any rate seven sacraments, 
of which three — Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist — 
have a higher sanction than the rest. A stronger 
interest, however, of a personal kind, attaches to the 
discussion on Orders; for both Cranmer and Barlow 
declared that, in their judgment, although the episco- 
pate had always been conferred by laying on of hands, 
and the ceremony of ordination under existing con- 
ditions was to be insisted on, yet this was clue to the 
fact that in the primitive days there were no Christian 
princes ; that Christian princes could and might appoint 
bishops and pastors just as they might appoint any 
other officers of State, without such ceremony, and 
without any deflection of Grace. In short, they 
affirmed the validity of the apostolic succession, 
without admitting its necessity. Cranmer 's words on 
the subject appear to be conclusive proof of the pro- 



94 CRANMER 

position already laid down, that his conception of the 
clergy as officers of the sovereign is the keynote of his 
entire policy. He was not, and did not pretend to 
be, the guardian of the spiritual Order against the 
encroachments of the temporal, but the spiritual 
counsellor and minister of the Supreme Head. Decrees 
of the Supreme Head, according to this view, were 
taken out of the field of public disputation, comment, 
or opposition, although it might be good that they 
should be held open to discussion and examination by 
competent and learned persons. 

At the same time with the Erudition there was 
prepared a Rationale of the services of the Church, 
rites and ceremonies, which did not receive the royal 
authority. It is not clear whether this had been 
drawn up by a second committee under Cromwell's 
instructions issued at the same time as those for the 
preparation of the Erudition. On the face of it, how- 
ever, the Rationale contained much that was opposed 
to Cranmer's own views, and it does not seem unlikely 
that his influence with the king was exerted against 
its being sanctioned. 

The year 1543 may be taken as marking the limits 
of the Reformation contemplated by Henry. He had 
asserted the supremacy of the Crown in unmistakable 
terms. With equal clearness he had abjured the 
authority of the pope. He had sanctioned the open 
Bible, and the introduction of the vernacular instead 
of Latin in the liturgy. Beyond recognising a dis- 
tinction between what is of faith and what is con- 
venient, he had allowed of no retreat from Roman 
doctrine. But he had abolished the institution of 
monasticism and laid hands on the monastic estates, 



FIDEI DEFENSOR 95 

diverting them to entirely personal purposes. And so 
matters stood, without further modification, till death 
laid its hand upon him. 

Henry is perhaps most commonly looked upon as a 
mere ruffian, save by those who regard opposition to 
the papacy as a certificate of character ; in whose eyes 
he assumes heroic proportions. He was, in fact, as it 
would seem, curiously composite. Entirely selfish, he 
yet had aspirations and a conception of the kingly 
office which kept him from degenerating into a 
Charles II. ; Europe could never afford to treat him as 
either a negligeable or a purchasable quantity. He 
was perfectly unscrupulous, yet constantly appealed to 
conscience ; he was thoroughly tyrannical, yet claimed 
to act strictly constitutionally. Intellectually, he was 
a sophist ; morally, he was a ruffian ; but he under- 
stood men, knew his own mind, and was the absolute 
master of every minister he employed. Wolsey was 
the ablest statesman of his time, and Cromwell the 
most masterful ; but there was no moment when the 
king could not have shattered either with a word. 
His government was remarkable neither for justice 
nor for far-sightedness ; but it had the unfailing- 
merit of stability. His matrimonial record speaks 
for itself. To the claims of loyal service and 
the dictates of generosity he was entirely deaf; the 
favourite or the trusty counsellor of one day were 
the victims of the next. To one man, and to one 
only as it would seem, he was unswervingly loyal; 
and that was Thomas Cranmer. It was not that 
he needed the archbishop ; after the Submission of 
the Clergy and the fall of the monasteries there was 
no power of resistance left to the clergy. But by a 



96 CRANMER 

strange freak of fancy, the masterful and merciless 
tyrant developed a sincere, almost a tender, affection 
for the timid and guileless scholar, who responded 
with a devotion no less genuine, wholly emotional and 
unreasoning. 



CHAPTER IX 

Affairs on the Continent: 1530-1563 

In an earlier chapter, the story of the Reformation 
movement on the Continent was/brought down to the 
Protest of Spires in 1529 — the year in which the 
English campaign of Reformation was ostensibly 
opened. It was remarked that for some two years 
from that time there was serious danger of such a rup- 
ture as would have involved a great religious war 
between the German Protestants and the Emperor. 
The aggression of the Turkish Power, however, 
compelled the postponement of hostilities; and the 
progress of Lutheranism was not challenged by 
force of arms till the death of Luther himself, 
which took place less than a year before that of 
Henry VIII. 

Had a great war of religion broken out on the 
Continent, it is scarcely possible that the attitude of 
England towards the Lutherans could have been 
maintained. Active support to the Protestants would 
have entailed a more rapid approximation to their 
doctrinal position, an earlier recognition of the hope- 
lessness of a reconciliation with Rome. On the other 
hand, opposition to them would have involved a 
reconsideration of the political breach with Rome ; 
7 



98 CRANMER 

while it is probable that Henry would have found that 
he could not afford to remain neutral. 

The actual effect was that Henry avoided joining a 
Lutheran League while he carried out his own policy 
of emphasising the national character of the Church 
in England and the personal profits to the sovereign 
derivable from such a national institution. Cranmer 
dreamed perpetually of a united Protestant Church ; 
Cromwell dreamed of an anti-papal and anti-imperial 
league, with England at its head. Henry dreamed of 
neither the one nor the other. His theological vanity 
prevented him from leaning towards Lutheran heresies, 
and his political theory did not incline him to become 
a member of a confederation which would certainly 
endeavour to control instead of being controlled by 
him. 

Thus when the Lutherans sent over a deputation in 
the hope of persuading Henry and Cranmer in effect 
to accept the Augsburg Confession, the king treated 
them with very scant courtesy, and expressed his 
anti-Lutheran sentiments next year in the Six Articles 
Act. Cromwell, whose schemes had to do more with 
princes than with divines, offered no opposition, but 
was sufficiently enamoured of his political project to 
negotiate the Cleves marriage, entirely with a view to 
consolidating a Protestant alliance. The project cost 
him his head, and did not ultimately assist the 
alliance. 

In fact, events on the Continent between 1530 and 
1560 influenced the course of affairs in England for 
the most part negatively or indirectly, not positively 
or directly. Yet the whole process of change was one 
intellectual movement, and affairs in Europe cannot 



AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 99 

be ignored without introducing erroneous ideas into 
the history of the isolated country. 

The intricacy of the proceedings of which Charles v. 
is the central figure is due largely to the fact that 
successive popes oscillated perpetually between the 
desire to suppress Lutheranism and the fear of Charles 
becoming too powerful. Whenever the Emperor was 
leaving the Protestant States in peace, the pope wanted 
them crushed. A moment came when they seemed on 
the verge of being crushed, and the pope hastened to 
display an antagonism which caused Charles to patch 
up some sort of reconciliation with them again. The 
French kings, both Francis and his successor Henry 11., 
were intolerant of heresy within their own dominions, 
but perfectly ready to make common cause with heret- 
ical enemies of the Emperor. Within the Empire there 
was not an effective general toleration throughout, but 
a geographical division into two hostile theological 
camps, religion going by principalities; so that the 
state arrived at was one, not of unity, but of hostilities 
perpetually imminent and perpetually deferred. 

During the decade of Cromwell's predominance in 
England, the Protestant League was strengthened by 
the accession of Brandenburg and the Dukedom of 
Saxony. Between the Saxon Electoral house, which 
supported Luther from the first, and the Ducal house, 
there was cousinship, and there was jealousy. Duke 
George was one of Luther's most zealous foes. But 
his brother Henry, on succeeding to the dukedom, went 
with the other party ; and Henry's son Maurice, who 
followed him in 1541, when he was but twenty, played 
a varied and generally a startling part in the events 
of the next twelve years. 
ILofC. 



ioo CRANMER 

Before this decade (1540-1550) was half through, 
Charles had come to the conclusion that the Schmal- 
kaldic League required suppression. Luther, who had 
always exerted his influence to prevent the League from 
precipitating a struggle, died in February 1546 ; and 
in the summer Charles, who had kept his designs 
concealed, attacked the Protestants, being joined by 
the Protestant Maurice of Saxony, whose intent was 
the acquisition of the dominions of the Electoral 
branch. The Imperial arms were entirely successful, 
and the heads of the League were captured. The 
decisive battle took place at Miihlberg in April 1547. 
But the Pope Paul in., who had succeeded Clement in 
1534, now severed himself from the Emperor; who in 
high indignation made a temporary settlement of 
German religious affairs after a fashion of his own, 
establishing a curious and wholly unsatisfactory 
modus vivendi by the measure known as the 
Augsburg Interim (1548). This in effect surrendered 
the orthodox position while purporting to maintain it ; 
with the natural result of satisfying neither party. 

The proceedings narrated above bore on the political 
position of the Protestants of the Empire, and show 
how it was that the spread of Lutheran teaching and 
the elaboration of Protestant doctrine continued with- 
out practical check. Two great factors in the later 
stages of the Reformation were being developed during 
these years — the Jesuit Society and the Calvinist 
School at Geneva — to which we shall revert. A third 
series of events claims immediate attention, being 
partly political and partly religious in character — 
namely, the three-handed game of battledore and 
shuttlecock, played with the demand for a General 



AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 101 

Council of the Church, between the popes, the 
Lutherans, and the Emperor. 

Even before the issuing of the Bull which Luther 
burned, the great leader of the Reformation had 
appealed to a General Council as the only authorita- 
tive court which could decide the questions at issue. 
Henry vm. and Cranmer some years later made the 
same appeal to a General Council as having higher 
authority than a pope, with the approval of all the 
doctors of the Church. At the Diet of 1530 the 
Emperor expressed himself in favour of a General 
Council to decide all the questions in dispute. On 
the other hand, to Pope Clement the proposal was 
objectionable on the personal ground that it weakened 
his own authority. To have a papal judgment over- 
ridden by a Council might have most embarrass- 
ing results. From Luther's point of view the appeal 
was in some degree a negation of any ultimate 
authority, since part of his doctrine had already been 
condemned by the Council of Constance; and if one 
Council could revoke the decisions of another, finality 
vanished. Charles, whose views were controlled by 
political rather than religious ideas, wished to end the 
division of the German States, and regarded a Council 
as the only means by which a working agreement 
could be achieved. 

Clement's successor, Paul in., differed from him in 
one vital particular, being not unwilling to have a 
Council, provided that he could rely on its maintain- 
ing his authority ; but then, mutatis mutandis, the 
Imperial view might have been expressed in similar 
terms. 

Now, while Clement lived, it is unnecessary to go 



102 CRANMER 

beyond the primary fact that he was determined to 
evade a Council at any price, though he was equally 
compelled to declare that he was most anxious to hold 
one. But when Paul in. followed him on the papal 
throne, the situation was changed. Each of the three 
principal parties was anxious for a Council on its 
own terms. Each was equally determined to resist — 
or repudiate — a council held on any other terms than 
their own. Consequently all three declared that a 
Council was the one thing they desired, but that one 
or both of the other parties showed plainly that they 
would not allow it to be of any avail. In addition, a 
formal peace between the princes of Christendom was 
a necessity, and the pope's schemes for Councils in 
1537 and 1538 were both upset by war between 
Charles and Francis. 

There was a time when it appeared that a basis 
might be arrived at which all three would accept, 
and which the French king also would not repudiate. 
The fundamental difference between Lutherans and 
pope was that the former required that certain 
questions should be treated as open which in the 
papal view were already decided. A conference was 
actually brought about at Ratisbon from which great 
things were hoped by the sanguine. The pope's 
selection of cardinals after his election had marked 
a conciliatory tendency on his part ; the appointment 
now of Contarini as legate seemed to ratify that 
promise. On the great question of justification by 
faith, the views of Contarini, Pole, and some others 
were hardly distinguishable from those of the 
Lutherans. For the German reformers, the chief 
representative was the learned and conciliatory 



AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 103 

Melanchthon. Luther distrusted the whole affair, 
and refused to attend ; but the absence of so polemical 
a leader seemed rather favourable to peace than other- 
wise. Under the tactful management of Contarini, 
all seemed to go wondrous well ; a real basis of agree- 
ment seemed to be emerging. But the moderates who 
were present could not control the partisans who were 
absent. The pope would not confirm the concessions 
of Contarini ; Luther would not swallow the sops. 
The fair hopes melted. Incidentally it was observed 
that Francis had deliberately sought to prevent the 
impending reconciliation. 

This conference of Ratisbon (1541) was the last of 
a series of similar attempts to arrive at some under- 
standing, due to the Emperor's initiative. He can 
hardly have hoped thereby to render a Council un- 
necessary ; but while they were in progress, any 
attempt to call one was necessarily deferred. 

The failure forced Charles back on either a Council 
or a national synod. The pope, recognising and dread- 
ing the latter alternative, became urgent that a Council 
should be held ; and the determination issued in the con- 
vocation of the Council of Trent. Although this took 
place in 1542, the Council was not formally opened 
till December 1545. 

The conditions under which it was called definitely 
mark off the established fact that Western Christen- 
dom was already divided with a permanent division 
into Protestant and Roman Catholic. Those con- 
ditions implied in themselves the validity of the 
papal authority and the prejudgment condemning 
Protestant opinions. Protestants who still asserted 
themselves to be members of the Catholic Church, 



104 CRANMER 

and denied that their views were heretical, could not 
accept it as oecumenical. They could not attend it, 
nor acknowledge its decisions. It was explicitly a 
council of a party in the Church which claimed for itself 
the monopoly of catholicity, and by its constitution it 
affirmed the heretical character of doctrines which 
the excluded ones declared to be catholic. Anglicans, 
Lutherans, and Calvinists were alike precluded in 
effect from any share in it. 

In brief, then, the Council of Trent was the corporate 
effort of the Roman Catholic body to effect a reforma- 
tion within its own boundaries; a reformation in 
which a leading part was to be played by two very 
important bodies : the Oratorians, founded later by St. 
Philip Neri, and the Society of Jesus, known as the 
Jesuits, already founded by the Spaniard Inigo Lopez 
de Recalde, commonly called Ignatius Loyola. 

The English Reformation is not practically con- 
cerned with the Oratorians; nor did the Jesuits 
influence it before the reign of Elizabeth. But their 
great and protracted campaign against that monarch 
vitally affected the national sentiment in her reign, 
intensifying and crystallising the anti-Roman feeling 
which the Marian persecution had already aroused. 
It will therefore not be out of place to give some 
attention to those early days of the Order that were 
contemporaneous with the main events with which we 
have to deal. 

Unlike most important movements, the one which 
took form in the Society of Jesus was not, as the 
phrase goes, "in the air"; it was conceived in the 
brain of a single man, Ignatius Loyola. Reform was 
in the air; but the method adopted was Loyola's 



AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 105 

own creation. A young knight full of martial ardour, 
he was struck down in battle ; when he rose from his 
sickbed, it was with a resolution to exchange earthly 
for heavenly warfare. There had been soldiers of the 
Cross before, but they had fought with the arm of 
flesh. The new idea was, to introduce military 
organisation into the warfare of the spirit. The utter 
obedience of the soldier to his superior officers is the 
principle that makes armies invincible; it was the 
beginning and the middle and the end of the associa- 
tion that Loyola conceived. Obedience to the right 
rule of life is enjoined upon all men; obedience to 
the rules of an order is enjoined upon members of the 
order ; not only obedience to these, but submission 
absolute, unquestioning, unhesitating to every injunc- 
tion from a superior officer was to be the fundamental 
law of the society. 

Even in Loyola's own mind the idea did not take 
immediate and final shape. For years he gave himself 
up to a personal training which should fit him for the 
end he had in view ; prayer and fasting, study and 
travel, the subjugation of the flesh, the education of 
the brain, the purification of the spirit, to these he 
devoted himself. Towards 1530 he met, and so to 
speak absorbed, the kindred spirit, Francois Xavier; 
in 1534 they and five others at Montmartre solemnly 
formed themselves into a company, the nucleus of one 
of the mightiest organisations for good or for evil 
that the world has known. They preached, they 
taught, they inspired, they became a power : in those 
early days, a power with a single eye to the service, 
as they understood it, of the Saviour. Mystics and 
enthusiasts, endowed with every advantage of birth 



106 CRANMER 

and breeding, of education and of ability, they gathered 
followers and disciples; till in 1543 the Order was 
recognised and confirmed by Paul III., a year after 
the revival of the Inquisition in Rome. 

Education, indeed, was a primary object with not a 
few of the Reformers of all schools ; with none was it / 
carried to such a pitch as with the Jesuits. They 
established colleges everywhere ; they trained their 
pupils' brains up to their highest capacity ; they in- 1 
stilled also an absolute discipline ; and a machine was ; 
thereby constructed which answered to the will of the 
engineer with an unparalleled perfection. The devo- / 
tion of the members of the organisation was unfailing. 
But the system carried with it, as of its essence, without 
which it could not exist, one quality fatal from the 
ethical point of view ; it killed the individual's sense 
of personal moral responsibility when it converted 
him into an exquisitely finished cog in a con- 
summately constructed machine. The moral lawj 
was absorbed in obedience. The Jesuit schools sentj 
forth many heroes and many martyrs ; but wherever | 
their influence obtained it inevitably and deliber- 
ately strangled freedom of conscience, which is the 
condition of moral responsibility and of robust spir- 
itual life. 

It was in the second year after the vow at Mont- 
martre that a new portent appeared in the theological 
firmament, when Calvin published his Institutes. In 
the way of coincidences and contrasts, it is curious 
to note that Loyola, who was to exercise a supreme 
influence on the Roman Catholic world, was born in 
the birth-year of Henry viii. ; while Calvin, who was 
to exercise in his turn a supreme influence on the 



AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 107 

Protestant world, was born in the year of his accession 
to the throne. 

A native of Picardy, he was driven out of France 
by the persecution which Francis carried out in his 
own dominions even while he was intriguing with the 
Protestant princes. At the age of twenty-seven he 
issued the work which shaped with a remorseless logic 
the conclusions implicit in the leading doctrines of the 
Swiss reformers. No whit less precise and rigid in 
its dogmatism than was the Roman Catholic religion 
after it emerged from the Council of Trent ; far more 
hostile to Catholicism than was Luther or even 
Zwingli; conceiving of the world as having been 
created by the Almighty in order to the salvation of 
the few elect and the damnation of the vast majority 
of His creatures; demanding for the ministry the 
right and the duty to punish with the sternest 
penalties not merely offences against social order but 
deflections from the moral and disciplinary standard 
laid down ; claiming assured salvation for the elect, 
but neither asking nor granting mercy for the 
" reprobate " : the stark and grim religion of Calvin 
laid its hand upon the Protestant Reformation. The 
Huguenots of France, the Netherlanders, the Scots, 
the English, chiefly of the eastern counties, who 
later gave to America her Pilgrim Fathers, fell under 
its dominion. These, too, have their glorious muster- 
roll of heroes and martyrs; the merciless rigour of 
their theory failing to crush entirely a certain illogical 
human tenderness of heart which redeemed Puritanism 
in its own despite. 

Calvin at first proved too harsh even for the 
Switzers, and he was banished from Geneva, but his 



108 CRANMER 

personality was far too vigorous for repression. Three 
years later — in 1541 — he was recalled and established 
as a kind of religious dictator in a nominal common- 
wealth. 

So, within"a very few months of Henry's death, the 
stage reached by the Reformation on the Continent 
may be thus summarised. 

The German modus vivendi, which had lasted till 
Luther's death, was disturbed by the Schmalkaldic 
war; but since the termination of that war syn- 
chronised with a quarrel between Emperor and pope, 
and the transference of the Council from the Imperial 
Trent to the Italian Bologna, the defeat of the 
Lutherans was not pressed to extremities. 

In the meantime, however, such prospects as there 
ever had been of a reconciliation between the Pro- 
testants and the Holy See had practically vanished. 
The attempt to find common ground had failed with 
the Diet of Ratisbon, and the Roman Church had 
started on a process of internal reform (known as the 
; counter-reformation), officially opened with the open- 
ing of the Council of Trent in December 1545, but 
actually initiated by the formation of the Jesuit \ 
Order. Among the Protestants, on the other hand, ' 
,the differences of the Lutherans and the Zwinglians 
had crystallised into the more rigid division of 
Lutherans and Calvinists, while the Reformers in 
England remained separate from both, though hitherto 
with some leanings towards a Lutheran compromise. 
From this time, however, the foreign influences in 
England became less Lutheran than Calvinistic, or 
Zwinglian at the least. 

The Augsburg Interim, which took effect the year 



AFFAIRS ON THE CONTINENT 109 

after Henry's death, was not, as we have observed, 
satisfactory to the Protestants. Some of them found 
it advisable to withdraw to the shelter of England, 
which under a new regime had become more congenial. 
In Germany the Interim was enforced with varying 
rigour, Maurice of Saxony ostensibly siding with the 
Emperor. But that daring and brilliant prince had 
other schemes in view. He was approaching his 
thirtieth year, and it may be that he was developing 
a more soberly patriotic spirit with the years. At 
any rate he was making up his mind to stand for 
German unity, and deliverance from the Spanish 
character of Charles's rule; and to that end he de- 
signed to place himself at the head of the Protestants, 
being himself a professed Lutheran in spite of his 
attack on the Schmalkaldic League. 

Charles seems to have had no suspicion of dangers 
ahead. At the end of 1549 Paul III. died; he was 
succeeded by Julius in., who favoured the Emperor. 
Julius at once notified that the Council was to renew 
its sessions at Trent. Charles was well pleased, and 
in return it was announced at the Imperial Diet that 
the decisions of the Council would be enforced. The 
meaning of that could only be that the toleration of 
Lutheranism was to end. But Charles had reckoned 
without his host ; the unexpected Maurice made a 
sudden swoop, scattered his troops, all but captured 
his person, incidentally stopped the proceedings of 
the council, and drove the Emperor to make the peace 
of Passau, which again secured the Protestants their 
liberties. 

The next year saw the death of Maurice, and also of 
Edward vi. By its close, negotiations had been opened 



no CRANMER 

for the union of the new Queen Mary to the Emperor's 
son Philip; in the following summer (1554) the 
marriage was celebrated. A few months later, England 
was formally reconciled to Rome, 

In February 1555 the Imperial Diet met at Augsburg, 
and, under the presidency of the Emperor's brother 
Ferdinand, ratified the toleration of Passau by the 
peace of Augsburg. The settlement then arrived at 
prevailed for half a century, and such hopes as 
Charles may have hitherto maintained of passing on 
the Imperial crown to Philip disappeared. It was 
clear that Germany would not endure a Spanish 
domination. 

The star of Charles was not in the ascendant. 
Julius was succeeded in this same year by the Cardinal 
Caraffa (Paul iv.), a fiery and austere zealot, whose 
personal animosity to the Hapsburgs was increased 
by the Augsburg success of the Protestants. In 
February of the following year Charles resigned the 
crown of Spain to Philip, retired from active political 
life, and died in the year which saw Elizabeth ascend 
the English throne. 

The final stage of the Council of Trent was not 
reached till 1563, when yet another pope was reigning, 
who had followed Paul iv. in 1559. Whereby there 
came about that union of Spain, Rome, and the Jesuits 
which forced England to consolidate herself once more 
into the Power which was to grapple with Spain in 
the new world, and to shatter the Invincible Armada. 



CHAPTER X 

JosiAH: 1547-1549 

Although Henry to the last refused to make any 
distinct movement in the direction of doctrinal refor- 
mation, the men who stood highest in his favour in 
the latter days were known to be in favour of the new 
ideas. The dying king was permitted to lay down 
the rule for succession according to his own choice ; 
and the orders he left behind him provided for a 
Council of Regency to conduct the affairs of the 
country during the minority of Edward, son of Jane 
Seymour, who succeeded to the throne. In default of 
issue he was to be followed by Mary and then by 
Elizabeth ; though the marriages with their respective 
mothers had been pronounced void. In the meantime 
it was evidently contemplated that Cranmer should 
hold a chief place in the council, which was intended 
to be a sort of round table. The leading spirits in it, 
however, had no sort of intention of being controlled 
by the dead hand of which they had hitherto stood in 
such awe. They are, indeed, even suspected of having 
falsified the list of the councillors which was actually 
produced. 

A very remarkable feature therein was the ex- 
clusion of Gardiner, who was without question the 

m 



ii2 CRANMER 

second ecclesiastic in the country. The one certain 
fact is that there was within that council a cabal 
who had already formed their plans for capturing the 
control. There may or may not have been trickery 
even in its formation ; there can be no doubt at all 
that it began operations by a reconstruction which the 
dead monarch had not contemplated. The Earl of 
Hertford, uncle of the boy-king Edward, was forthwith 
made Protector of the realm, and Duke of Somerset. 
His brother, the Lord High Admiral, became Lord 
Seymour of Sudeley, and made haste to marry the 
consort who had succeeded in surviving Henry. Lord 
Lisle became Earl of Warwick, and the unscrupulous 
Rich took Wriothesly's place as chancellor. The 
cabal had captured the machinery of government, 
and a very curious group they formed. 

The cleverest of them was probably Paget, and the 
vilest was Rich ; but the chief was the Lord Protector. 
For every one of them the consideration of primary 
importance was personal aggrandisement ; all had 
profited largely by the spoliation of the recent reign. 
How far any of them possessed religious convictions 
may be doubted, but their professed opinions were for 
the most part on the side of the new theories. Somerset 
himself, though greedy and selfish and overflowing 
with vanity, appears not to have been entirely lacking 
in sincerity ; and while incapable of conducting a 
vigorous administration — and consequently alternat- 
ing between habitual weakness and occasional violence 
— he had a curious penchant for passing as a friend of 
the people, and a curious success in achieving popu- 
) larity with the crowd. 

It was a business of the first importance to 



JOSIAH 113 

thoroughly fetter the one man on the other side 
whose political ability was of a commanding order — 
Bishop Gardiner. Tunstall of Durham was able, but 
no fighter; Bonner was truculent, but without in- 
fluence ; Gardiner was the last of the old school of 
political ecclesiastics of which Wolsey had been the con- 
summation. But he had no chance against the forces 
arrayed to overthrow him. He was indeed permitted 
to take the principal part in the obsequies of Henry, 
which were celebrated with all the pomp and all the 
ceremonial of the Old Church; but it was Cranmer 
who officiated at the coronation of the young king; 
and in doing so he struck the note of warning, in a 
discourse which likened Edward to the boy-king 
Josiah, who destroyed images and otherwise purified 
the religion of the kingdom of Judah — with obvious 
inferences as to what the new Josiah was to be 
expected to do. 

Gardiner felt that he must either take up the chal- 
lenge or follow the archbishop's lead. The time for som- 
bre acquiescence was past, and he declared against any 
innovations or changes until the boy-monarch should 
be of age. At the first outset it appears that Cranmer 
would have been willing to take the same line ; but he 
was always susceptible to the influence of his sur- 
roundings, and it did not take many days to persuade 
him that the de facto Government had the same 
authority as a full-grown king — more especially as his 
personal inclination had long been towards a very 
marked advance in the direction of at least liturgical 
and ceremonial reform ; and as more than once, while 
Henry was yet living, he had been disappointed in 
his pet project of formulating a body of doctrine in 



ii 4 CRANMER 

conjunction with the leading spirits of German Pro- 
testantism. 

In Henry's reign the Reformation had been 
sufficiently vigorous, but the field in which the 
Defender of the Faith had allowed it scope was 
limited. He had dealt with the pope, the clergy, and 
the temporalities ; the phase of reformation which 
commenced after his death was a revision of religious 
doctrine and practice. 

The central subject of controversy between Ortho- 
dox Catholicism and the various schools of reformers 
was indubitably the theory of the Mass, Communion, 
or Lord's Supper : frequently referred to as the Sacra- 
ment of the Altar. Nor has there ever been a subject 
on which it is less possible to discover the actual 
views held by half the controversialists. 

At one end was the doctrine vulgarly propounded 
and understood as orthodox ; that the act of consecra- 
tion by the priest changed the material particles of 
bread into material particles of flesh, and the material 
particles of wine into material particles of blood, while 
by an illusion to the eye, the touch, and the taste, no 
change was apparent. 

This doctrine had its esoteric or scholastic rendering, 
intelligible to the learned, but wholly meaningless to 
the unlearned. The philosophers had discovered a dis- 
tinction between the Thing and its Attributes ; between 
Substance and Accidents ; between the Real and the 
' Material ; between the Noumenal and the Phenomenal. 
In each case it was the second term which applied to 
what is subject to the laws of matter. Size, colour, form 
are Accidents ; the Substance is without magnitude. The 
Material is extended in space, cannot be in two places 



JOSIAH 115 

at once, is hard, soft, light, heavy, and so on ; the Real 
has nothing to do with space except so far as it is 
associated with matter. One substance then may be 
associated with matter in more than one place, and 
with accidents usually associated with a different sub- 
stance. Therefore the substance of bread and wine 
may be changed into the substance of flesh and blood 
without any change in the material or attributes, 
the phenomenal aspect. This was the nature of the 
change effected by the act of consecration. Such was 
the scholastic doctrine of Transubstantiation, intelli- 
gible only to the trained metaphysician. 

At the opposite extreme stood the Zwinglian , 
doctrine, that Christ's words, " This is My Body," 
" This is My Blood," were entirely metaphorical ; that 
no change whatever took place; that the sacrament 
was a purely commemorative ordinance. 

The Calvinistic position was not greatly removed 
from this, but went so far further as to affirm that 
in the act of participation the communicant metaphoric- 
ally received Christ into his heart ; did actually receive 
a gift of Grace. This was the reward of participating 
in the commemorative ceremony, and was in no way 
dependent on the act of consecration. 

Between these extremes it is possible to formulate a 
series of hypotheses, each of which professes to be the 
statement of a doctrine of the Real Presence. One at 
least is generally intelligible: that just as Jehovah, 
present throughout the world, might yet be specially 
localised on Sinai, in the Burning Bush, in the Holy 
of Holies, so Christ reigning in heaven might yet be 
present in the sacred elements, in a special sense. 
Another is the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation, 



n6 CRANMER 

declared by so subtle an intellect as that of the late 
Canon Aubrey Moore to be unintelligible, which 
affirms the simultaneous presence of the substance 
(whether in the literal or the scholastic sense) of 
Christ's Body and Blood with the substance of bread 
and wine. Again, it is propounded that the Glorified 
Body is not a Natural Body, but exempt from the 
laws of matter; though here it seems to be for- 
gotten that the sacrament was instituted before the 
Resurrection. Or again, it seems to be intended 
that the Presence is purely spiritual, although the 
literal correctness of the terms " Body and Blood " is 
insisted on while everything connoted by those terms 
is rejected : the difficulty involved being defended on 
the unanswerable plea that it is a " mystery." In every 
one of these interpretations it is of course obviously 
possible to maintain that the Presence is conditional 
on the faith of the participant, or is involved by 
the act of consecration, or is independent of the act of 
consecration, or is continuous after that act, or is 
confined to the moment of participation. 

Amid such a maze of hypotheses it is scarcely 
surprising that considerable doubt prevails as to the 
precise hypothesis favoured at any given time — in a 
period when opinions were in a state of general flux — 
by Cranmer, Ridley, and others who were prominent 
in the controversy of the time. 

In the regions of abstract discussion, Justification 
by Faith was a subject hardly less prominent, but 
involving far less bitterness. For, while Luther laid 
it down as a cardinal tenet, there were not a few 
among the avowed Romanists who were ready to 
accept it — such as Cardinals Pole and Contarini. If 



JOSIAH 117 

it be admitted that charity is the necessary fruit of 
faith, the question whether justification is to be 
attributed to the faith alone, or to faith and charity 
together, becomes a purely academic one. It is only 
from the amazing antinomian theory that faith 
absolves from charity that danger can be appre- 
hended. 

Other subjects of controversy, however, were of a 
much more practical character. The abuse, under the 
Romish system, of the doctrines of penance and pur- 
gatory had developed the idea that sin could be 
weighed in a balance against penalties and purged by 
them, independently of repentance. The real doctrine 
underlying both ideas is, that sin is purged by repent- 
ance, but that justice demands also the penalty, 
which again the true penitent knows to be deserved. 
The travesty of this doctrine, involved in the idea that 
penalties could be bought off, led by no means logically 
to a rejection of the whole theory of purgatory — which 
total rejection, however, was never affirmed by the 
English formularies. The moral effect of the extreme 
attitude, practically involving a belief that the soul 
passes straight from the body to eternal bliss or ever- 
lasting torment, was by no means inconsiderable. 

The theory of a celibate clergy, again, was of practical 
moment, because it not only affected their individual 
lives, but marked off the whole ecclesiastical body as 
separate from other men, and living under a different 
law. The abolition of the rule was a long step towards 
accepting a view of the sacerdotal office at least greatly 
modified from that heretofore prevalent. 

None of these questions, however, appealed to the 
popular mind so strongly as the contests over images 



n8 CRANMER 

and ceremonies, the customs and observances which in 
the eyes of the new school either were positively 
idolatrous or tended to idolatrjr — to the worship of the 
work of men's hands. This struggle, however, did to 
some extent involve the most abstract of all the sub- 
jects of contention, the theory of the Presence in the 
Sacrament, on account of the question whether the 
consecrated elements had by the act of consecration 
been rendered an object of worship. 

Iconoclasm, celibacy, ceremonial were all matters 
that could be dealt with after a comparatively summary 
manner ; on the more abstract points of doctrine, a 
somewhat more deliberate method was necessarjr. The 
new government could hardly execute a right-about- 
face and forthwith deny formally the positions which 
the most advanced of the bishops had been content to 
accept up to Henry's death. But the penal statutes 
could be repealed, the Henrician professions could be 
treated as open, and pulpits and professorial chairs 
could be gradually packed with upholders of the new 
views, so as to pave the way for their formal adoption 
or admission within the scope of the formularies, while 
the literature on the same side could be systematically 
encouraged. As yet the question of the form of Church 
government, which at a later date issued in Dissent, 
had not acquired grave importance. 

The campaign of Reformation, suspended by the late 
king when his own immediate ends had been achieved, 
may be said to have opened with the archbishop's 
coronation discourse, which was a virtual declaration 
of war against images. This was followed up by ob- 
taining the royal authority for the Book of Homilies, 
and the Paraphrase of Erasmus in English. 



JOSIAH 119 

Neither Parliament nor Convocation had a voice in 
these matters. Throughout the year 1547 the Pro- 
tector's Government relied on that Act of the past 
reign which gave the force of law to the Royal Pro- 
clamations. 

The Book of Homilies, referred to as the " First 
Book of Homilies " in the Thirty-Nine Articles of a 
later date, had been compiled by Cranmer during 
Henry's lifetime, and he had made abortive attempts 
to procure their sanction from king and Convocation : 
no doubt in the hope that they would in effect take 
the place of the King's Book as an exposition of 
orthodox doctrine. On the positive side they did not 
greatly depart from the lines laid down in that 
volume ; yet by implication, and by omissions, they 
did constitute a material departure, inasmuch as they 
said little of any of the sacraments, and nothing 
at all of the Sacrament of the Altar. By the process 
of limiting the parochial clergy to reading the homilies 
instead of preaching sermons, these were now in effect 
restrained from instructing their flocks in these high 
mysteries, and the clear impression was conveyed that 
the Church deliberately abstained from authoritative 
pronouncement with regard to them. 

The Paraphrase of Erasmus was at once more in- 
sidious and more actively propagandist. The great 
scholar's Paraphrase of 'the New Testament was con- 
structed from the point of view of a reformer, and 
suggested endless parallelisms between the Jewish 
priesthood and the clergy, the antagonism of Christ's 
teaching to ecclesiastical injunctions, the opposition 
between the spirit and the letter. 

A visitation was ordered and a Commission ap- 



120 CRANMER 

pointed for the purpose, on the analogy of Cromwell's 
proceedings. It was the business of this Commission 
to take order for the further destruction of " abused " 
images — images, that is, which tended to encourage 
superstition and to attract popular worship to them- 
selves — for distributing the Paraphrase, and for 
enforcing the reading of the homilies. The interpre- 
tation of what brought images under the " abused " 
category was so extremely liberal as to cover painted 
windows illustrating miracles, and led generally to 
much breaking of glass, whitewashing of frescoes, 
and demolishment of carving generally. The injunc- 
tions which the Commissioners enforced are known as 
the Injunctions of Edward VI. In part they were 
virtually a repetition of those issued by Cromwell, the 
general purpose of the visitation being to see that the 
clergy were duly performing their duties ; but besides 
the additions above named, it was enjoined in them 
that the lessons should be read in English, that the 
litany in English should be used, and that processions 
should cease. 

The visitation did not commence till the summer 
was well advanced. Gardiner had been prompt 
enough in declaring his position. Cranmer tried to 
win his adherence to the Book of Homilies, but was 
vigorously rebuffed, and distinctly had the worst of 
the encounter. Gardiner took his stand on the King's 
Book and the adequacy of the Henrician reformation, 
wanting to know what Cranmer meant by seeking to 
uproot that accepted and authoritative exposition. 
The archbishop could only reply that Henry had been 
seduced into the late settlement ; a proposition scarcely 
consistent with the attitude he had himself main- 



JOSIAH 121 

tamed, as Gardiner promptly pointed out, not without 
sarcasm. No steps disturbing that settlement could, 
in the Bishop of Winchester's opinion, be taken, except 
by the personal authority of Henry's successor; nor 
could Edward properly exercise that authority while 
still a minor. And when it came to the visitation, he 
remarked with considerable force that it was a sus- 
pension of and contrary to the law ; and that it was 
dangerous to urge that a royal proclamation could 
override the law, as he had himself seen the clergy 
brought under Praemunire, and heads rolling on the 
scaffold, for obeying a royal order which was against 
the law. The example of resistance was followed by 
Bonner, Bishop of London, and both prelates were 
removed to confinement in the Fleet, muzzled but not 
entirely silenced. 

In November, both Convocation and Parliament 
met ; and the Six Articles and Treasons Acts were 
repealed, with the general approbation of clergy and 
people. Both assemblies demanded the restoration of 
the Communion in both kinds, and Convocation asked 
for, but did not till a year later obtain, relief from the 
laws enjoining clerical celibacy. Parliament, on the 
other hand, confirmed the last act of spoliation in 
Henry's reign by bestowing the surviving chantries on 
the king; a measure less outrageously abused than 
others of a like kind, since, in part at least, the funds 
were utilised for the endowment of schools. The 
credit which Edward has gained for his liberality in 
the cause of education is considerably exaggerated when 
the resources of his generosity are brought to mind; still, 
some praise is doubtless due, since the funds were not 
merely appropriated to the satisfaction of private greed. 



122 CRANMER 

Convocation on its own part endeavoured to recover 
some of the ground lost by the " Submission of the 
Clergy." They petitioned that the spectral Commis- 
sion of thirty-two, which was to have examined the 
canons of the Church, might be materialised, and also 
that the clergy themselves should sit in Parliament, or 
that at least their assent should be necessary to statutes 
and ordinances dealing with religion. The attempt 
was a complete failure, but remains on record as a 
formal protest against their forcible deprivation of 
what they held to be constitutional rights. 

During the next year, 1548, the war against images 
was carried a stage further, the distinction of " abused " 
images being abolished and all alike being condemned ; 
and orders were issued suppressing various minor 
practices which were falling into a comparatively 
general condemnation as superstitions, such as creep- 
ing to the Cross. The iconoclastic fervour of the 
reformers, however popular it may have been locally 
in places where foreign refugees and English disciples 
of German or Swiss teachers congregated, was by no 
means to the mind of the rural population ; sundry 
riots took place, and in Cornwall there was something 
of a rising. The important features of the year's 
movement, however, were the appointment of the 
Windsor Commission, primarily to compose an Order 
of Communion in English, the preparation of the First 
Prayer-Book of Edward VI., and the stringent measures 
taken for the regulation, almost the suppression, of 
preaching. 

The practice of licensing preachers was an old one, 
originally instituted for the relief of the parochial 
clergy. The hypothesis that a curate is ex officio 



JOSIAH 123 

capable of composing and delivering an unlimited 
number of discourses to the edification of his par- 
ishioners, was considered doubtful ; and while bishops 
had licence to preach in any diocese, and parish priests 
to preach in their own parishes, licences were issued to 
enable members of the various orders to occupy parish 
pulpits. Henry, however, had found it convenient, 
when special doctrines required to be emphasised, to 
suspend the normal licences, and restrict the right of 
preaching to a comparatively select number of licensees ; 
the rest of the clergy being only allowed to deliver 
authorised discourses or homilies. Now, however, the 
power of issuing licences was restricted to the king, 
the protector, and the primate ; and an extremely 
rigorous selection being exercised, it is obvious that 
the whole power of pulpit rhetoric was necessarily 
made to tell in favour of the advanced party. But 
even so, it was found that the selection was inadequate ; 
that preachers were too violently controversial ; and 
at last preaching was altogether suspended, pending 
the publication of the new Prayer-Book, which it was 
hoped would secure something like uniformity. The 
plain fact, no doubt, was that men who could be at all 
relied upon to refrain from inflammatory utterances 
were hardly to be found. 

The new Order of Communion was issued shortly 
before Easter. The doctrine of the Sacrament of the 
Altar had not as yet been admitted into the field of 
open controversy ; the ecclesiastical conservatives were 
not unrepresented on the Commission, though neither 
Gardiner nor Tunstall were among their number ; and 
the innovations, though important, did not involve 
grave points of doctrine. Although the greater part 



124 CRANMER 

of the service was in English, there were still portions 
for which Latin was retained ; and the administration 
of the Communion in both kinds had already received 
the definite support of the clergy. 

From this revision of the Order of Communion the 
Commission proceeded to the preparation of a Prayer- 
Book which should take the place of the varying 
breviaries and " Uses " prevailing in different dioceses, 
— a scheme for which there was ample precedent, and 
which was not by any means revolutionary. Cardinal 
Quignon had prepared a revised Roman breviary, 
which however had not met with sufficient approval at 
Rome to receive papal authority, and the Elector- 
Archbishop of Cologne had prepared a liturgy with 
the assistance of Luther, both of which the Commission 
had before them ; while the " Use of Sarum " was the 
particular form adopted as the general basis for the 
new book. Cranmer, however, had devoted an infinity 
of study to existing liturgies, Eastern as well as 
Western, and the accumulated stores of his learning were 
frequently utilised in amending, amplifying, and improv- 
ing the common material upon which his less erudite 
colleagues were employed. The idea of simplification 
and uniformity was an old one ; such a reform belong- 
ing to that large category of things which, by general 
consent, ought to be done, but continue under official 
consideration from generation to generation. 

The scheme, then, was not revolutionary, nor could 
that term be applied to the compilation itself. Its 
primary characteristic was the full and final substitu- 
tion of the vernacular for Latin throughout. It main- 
tained the Communion in both kinds, and it laid down 
that auricular confession was not actually necessary. 



JOSIAH 125 

Otherwise it was in effect only by omission that 
practices prevalent in the past reign were departed 
from ; and it remains to this day a disputed point 
whether omission implied prohibition in respect of 
ceremonial observances. Forms at the same time 
were so far modified as not to involve explicitly the 
doctrine of Transubstantiation. But, on the whole, 
it may be said that it was possible to reconcile accept- 
ance of the King's Book with acceptance of the Prayer - 
Book, and also to reconcile acceptance of the latter 
with a very considerable deviation from the former. 
For the noble language of the English rendering which 
has made the Prayer-Book a masterpiece of literature, 
Cranmer himself is known to be mainly responsible ; 
and for this, at least, he is entitled to ungrudging 
praise. 

The evidence, on the whole, does not show that the 
book received the imprimatur of Convocation ; but it 
was authorised by Parliament in January 1549. 
Amongst the most important measures of that session 
was the passing of the first Act of Uniformity enjoin- 
ing the universal use of the Prayer-Book on the clergy 
under severe penalties. On the precise interpretation 
of the legal effects of this Act depend largely the 
questions of legitimate ceremonial observances which 
have recently agitated so severely the minds of 
Churchmen — and others. 

In the same session was passed an Act legalising the 
marriage of clergy. 

Up to this point, although the Reformation had 
arrived at an aggressive phase in respect of images 
and ceremonies, it had conceded nothing to the dis- 
tinctively Swiss school. The English reformers cannot 



126 CRANMER 

be said to have followed Luther, but the lines of the 
movement were generally in much the same direction 
as his. Hitherto, however, Cranmer's personal longing 
to act in direct conjunction with German Protestantism 
had been continuously balked ; and a great influx of 
foreigners which set in during 1548, supported by the 
rising influence of English disciples of the religious 
dictator of Geneva, rendered the remaining years of 
Edward's reign at once more violent, more revolu- 
tionary, and theologically more Calvinistic. 



CHAPTER XI 

The Puritan Eddy: 1549-1553 

The conditions under which the doctrines and practices 
of a reformed Church made their way in England were 
very materially affected by the anarchy into which 
civil government had fallen. In Henry's days there 
had been no absence of method, no uncertainty about 
the ends in view, and, whatever the iniquities of the 
king or his ministers, the reformation movement was 
systematic. But in Edward's reign there was never 
either a strong head or a strong hand in control. A 
Government which remains rigidly inert till the effect- 
ive moment arrives and then seizes its opportunity is 
bound to accomplish a good deal ; but one which only 
moves spasmodically is tolerably certain to effect such 
good as it does accomplish in the worst possible way. 
The reign of Elizabeth was a triumph of opportunism 
— of a consummate perception of exactly how far it was 
safe to go at a given time, the outcome of a penetrating 
measurement of the forces at work. But in Edward's 
day, Cecil, the arch-opportunist, was only biding his 
time — applying the principles of opportunism to his 
personal career, achieving such distinction as might 
help him in the future without a too dangerous present 
eminence ; while the political chiefs had no definite 

127 



128 CRANMER 

policy except self - aggrandisement. The economic 
revolution produced by the fall of the monasteries 
caused much suffering among the poorer classes; the 
funds which had formerly in great part been expended 
in the relief of distress were diverted into the pockets 
of the wealthy; and a generation of particularly 
grasping landlords robbed the agricultural population 
with no less alacrity than they had displayed in 
absorbing the spoils of the Church. There was none 
to restrain the spoilers, for it was they themselves who 
sat in the high places. 

Now the Government, associated by its very com- 
position with the policy of plunder, was by consequence 
necessarily anti-clerical. Hence a popular inference 
associated Reformers as such with the policy of 
plunder. In many respects the association was gro- 
tesquely misplaced. But it was a notable result of the 
prevalence of this idea that, whereas in the past revolts 
of the peasantry had been anti - clerical, and the 
Lollards had been suppressed more for their economic 
than for their ecclesiastical heresies; and whereas in 
Germany the great peasant revolt was associated with 
anabaptism; in Edward's reign the important and 
bloody rising in the West was anti-Protestant. In the 
eastern counties, where Protestant opinions were in 
advance of Government, Ket's rising was not religious 
in its object, but social; the ideas were dissociated; 
there the Puritan movement had begun with the 
people. In the West, Puritan ideas had not penetrated 
to the people when the Government imposed its ecclesi- 
astical reforms. 

Thus it was that when the new Prayer-Book was 
forced upon the west country, it was fiercely resisted; 



THE PURITAN EDDY 129 

the people cried out against its innovations. The 
complaint that its modified ceremonial was " like a 
Christmas play " is not easy of interpretation ; perhaps 
it meant that what was felt to be solemn and magnifi- 
cent, in association with rites that were mysterious 
and awe-inspiring when veiled in a foreign language, 
became paltry and tawdry as the adjunct of a service 
in the vernacular. At any rate, the men of Devon and 
Cornwall declared themselves with no uncertain voice 
to be opposed to all innovations ; they even called for 
the revival of the Six Articles; but they also very 
significantly demanded the restoration to the Church 
of at least one-half of the abbey and chantry lands 
howsoever and by whomsoever acquired. The rising 
was extremely serious, the insurgents being able even 
to lay siege to Exeter ; and it was put down with no 
little difficulty by the employment of large bodies 
of mercenaries. The archbishop's reply to the petition 
of the insurgents shows somewhat unusual marks of 
temper on his part. The notable feature of the rising, 
however, is that in this one case religion was put in 
the forefront as the cause. Disturbances occurred 
in many other parts of the country, but they in 
nearly every case were openly social in their origin, 
and there is considerable ground for supposing that 
opposition to the religious innovations would never 
have amounted to a sufficiently exciting cause for 
revolt, except when they were regarded as signs of the 
generally oppressive policy of the new nobility. 

Thus in the eastern counties, Robert Ket gathered 
round him in the neighbourhood of Norwich a force 
of 16,000 men, who demanded the redress of griev- 
ances ; but the English service was read twice daily in 
9 



130 CRANMER 

his camp. It has become so much the fashion of late 

to find it pretty broadly hinted that the English 

■ Reformation was a purely political affair — in a sort of 

reaction against the school which was wont to describe 

it as the work of a nation enthusiastically Protestant — 

that it is worth while dwelling a little on points which 

emphasise the widespread existence of strong religious 

feeling. It need not be denied that until they were 

forced to take sides, the people generally did not very 

greatly care about the points in dispute between the 

) old and new schools ; but unless the religious senti- 

; ment had been active in the minds of the humbler 

; classes, neither the religious purpose of the Western 

rising nor the religious tone of Ket's would have been 

possible. 

Vacillation, violence, and bad faith characterised the 
suppression of both risings, as might have been ex- 
pected from such a Government. Already the Lord 
Protector's brother had been executed unheard, on the 
ground that he was plotting to overthrow the Govern- 
ment — a charge in all probability true. But the 
flagrant injustice of the sentence under such circum- 
stances is made only a deeper proof of the evil days 
upon which the country had fallen, when we know 
that it was endorsed both by Cranmer and Latimer. 
Somerset's own doom was approaching, and in October 
he in turn was supplanted by Warwick, and sent to 
the Tower ; his supplanter sharing his qualities of greed 
and selfishness, but excelling him in artfulness, while 
lacking that curious good-nature which mysteriously 
endeared the fallen Protector to the Commons. 

Hitherto Cranmer's personal leanings had been 
rather to the German than the Swiss reformers ; but 



THE PURITAN EDDY 131 

it is evident that about this time he was beginning to feel 
the influence of those more advanced foreigners who 
had recently been finding their way into England. 
When the Prayer- Book was in preparation, the con- 
cessions made to Calvin's views had been slight, and 
the disciples of Zurich and Geneva shook their heads 
over the slothfulness of Thomas of Canterbury. But 
in the parliamentary debates of January (1549) he 
obtained their applause, possibly from some mis- 
apprehension as to his real position on the doctrine 
of the sacraments. At this time it is clear that he 
did not hold the view known as sacramentarian, which 
treated those rites as purely symbolical and com- 
memorative. But the influence of such men as Peter 
Martyr was increasing. An ex-friar, who had passed 
on to the Lutheran stage, Martyr progressed towards 
a more definite Calvinism, and his appointment to the 
Chair of Divinity at Oxford led to the open and public 
debating of such high mysteries as the Sacrament of 
the Altar in a style which tended to a painful irrever- 
ence ; pleasing no doubt to the mere controversialists, 
and to fanatics of both parties, but hardly helpful to 
the cause of religion. 

A much more moderate man was Bucer, a Lutheran 
from Strasburg, who became Professor of Divinity at 
Cambridge, and whose judgment probably carried 
more real weight both with Cranmer himself and 
with Nicholas Ridley, who appears to have drawn the 
primate in his train while his own opinions grew more 
pronounced. For some time chaplain to the arch- 
bishop, Ridley was made Bishop of Rochester soon 
after Edward's accession, and Bishop of London in 
Bonner's place in 1550. A learned, resolute, and 



132 CRANMER 

advanced reformer, he appears to have been much 
less extravagant in his methods than many of his 
colleagues, and in spite of his activity in what is 
called the " altar war " — the substitution of com- 
munion tables for the sacrificial altar — his influence 
among the reforming leaders was rather restraining 
than otherwise, his enthusiasms keeping pace with 
his intelligence. However his views changed, the 
change was steady and not vacillating ; whereas 
Cranmer was ever alternating between intellectual 
convictions which he. trembled to avow, and avowals 
which went beyond his convictions. Both men form 
a strong contrast to the third of the most famous 
martyrs of Mary's reign, Hugh Latimer ; who never 
had any pretensions to the title of theologian or 
philosopher, but was a great orator and a great 
moralist with a strong tinge of quixotism. 

The influx of foreign Protestants was the cause of a 
very curious innovation — the formation by authority 
of a sort of ecclesiastical body of foreigners under 
the supervision of a Polish Protestant of noble birth 
known as Laski or Alasco, who was also intimate and 
influential with the advanced Anglican divines. Cer- 
tain heretical opinions continued to be severely dealt 
with, more particularly those tainted with Socinian- 
ism ; but not a few of the heresies of the late reign 
were by this time admitted into the recognised field 
of debate. The purpose, however, of the institution of 
Alasco's Church was less the protection of the foreign 
Protestants than their restraint from falling into the 
dangerous ways of Anabaptism. 

Two other men exercised a powerful influence in 
the direction of Puritanism — -John Knox and Hooper. 



THE PURITAN EDDY 133 

Knox, of the straitest sect of the Calvinists, was des- 
tined to set the dour stamp of his arrogant austerity 
on an entire nation ; but before he took up his task in 
Scotland he helped to mould the Puritan material in 
the southern country, in the character of a licensed 
preacher. Hooper was a disciple of Zurich, who be- 
came chaplain to Somerset, and rapidly achieved the 
position of a leader of the advanced school. 

A considerable time elapsed before Cranmer and 
Hooper found themselves in accord. The burning 
questions between the reformers had now been re- 
solved into two groups — the controversies concerning 
the Sacrament of the Altar, and those about ceremonies 
and vestments. 

Until Henry's death, authority in England had 
maintained the doctrine of Transubstantiation ; but 
authority hardly waited for the repeal of the Six 
Articles Act to modify that position, which was cer- 
tainly not asserted in the First Prayer-Book, though 
it may have been compatible therewith. It would 
seem, on the whole, that Cranmer, Ridley, and gener- 
ally those of the reformers who had not gone direct 
to Zurich or Geneva for their inspiration, continued in 
some form or other to uphold the doctrine of the Real 
Presence; but then, as now, their critics could not 
agree in interpreting their views. Cranmer published 
a work on the subject which provoked the imprisoned 
Gardiner, as some say, to castigate him in a reply — as 
others say, to invite his own castigation in the archi- 
episcopal rejoinder. Cranmer's learning was more 
extensive than Gardiner's, and the latter certainly 
committed himself to repudiating as fictions of his 
antagonist explanations of the catholic doctrines 



134 CRANMER 

which had been formulated by the most revered 
doctors of the Church. There are, however, some 
points which can be arrived at without much dubi- 
tation. Cranmer definitely rejected the theory that 
any material change took place in the bread and 
wine; but, on the other hand, he also denied that 
the participation was a merely symbolical act. Less 
definitely he seems to have held that the Presence is 
not in the elements, but is imparted to the partaker in 
the act of participation. Gardiner affirmed the Pres- 
ence to be called into the bread and wine by the act of 
consecration, but failed to provide any intelligible 
account of what he meant by that Presence. To less 
subtle intellects it would appear that the ultimate 
distinction between the two points of view is, that on 
Gardiner's the elements become themselves an object of 
worship by consecration, and on Cranmer's they do 
not. The Lutheran view, on the other hand, attempts 
to specify the manner of the Presence in a way rejected 
alike by the Roman doctors and by the Anglicans. As 
Ridley himself put it : the Romans affirmed that after 
the consecration there is one substance, the body and 
blood of Christ ; he and Cranmer affirmed that there 
is one substance, bread and wine ; but the Lutherans 
affirmed that there are two. But it has never been 
shown that either Cranmer or Ridley questioned that 
the actual Presence of Christ is actually imparted to 
the recipient in the act of participation ; wherein they 
differed completely and effectively from the whole of 
the Swiss school. 

But to the vulgar mind, the issue which appeared 
important was whether or no the elements were an object 
of worship. It was an instance of the crucial idea of 



THE PURITAN EDDY 135 

the Reformation, or of one of the two crucial ideas. 
The Reformation claimed to be a restoration of the ' 
pure doctrine always held by the Church, but corrupted 
and abused by pontiffs and doctors. It struck at prac- 
tices which might be commendable in themselves, but 
opened the door to abuses. It suspected doctrines of 
which such practices were a natural corollary. It 
found the due reverence born of association degenerat- 
ing in practice into actual idolatry of material things. 
It found the splendour of ceremonial translated into a 
subordination of the truth signified to the symbol. It 
found the aids to human frailty elevated into condi- 
tions of grace. It set about remedying these things 
often with an appalling crudity and violence generating 
an irreverence no more commendable than the idolatry 
which it displaced. Idolatry and irreverence alike 
were a degeneration from the pure worship which it 
was sought to restore. The irreverence, however, was 
not inherent in the Reformation ; it was an accident of 
the convulsive conditions under which it took place. 

But just as an exaggerated importance attached to 
ceremonial observances, an exaggerated importance 
attached to their abrogation ; and in the latter half of 
Edward's reign it seemed as though before long the 
extremists would carry matters with a high hand. 
The party of resistance were held in check ; Gardiner 
and Bonner were already in prison, and thither Tun- 
stall of Durham followed them. Heath and Day were 
turned out of their bishoprics. The moderate men, 
like Cranmer and Ridley, still managed to maintain a 
preponderating influence in the councils of the Church, 
and formularies and public pronouncements continued 
to be possible of acceptance except by extreme re- 



136 CRANMER 

actionaries ; nevertheless, it was more and more evi- 
dent that the revolutionaries were making way. 

Most notable of these was Hooper, who has been 
called the father of Nonconformity — a term which has 
come to be curiously misused. Nonconformity implied 
nothing in the shape of dissent or separatism, but was 
a protest against regulations imposed by the Act of 
Uniformity. Its aim was not schism, but revision. 
In its initial stages, it was concerned mainly with the 
enforcement of rules about vestments and the like, 
which lacked scriptural authority. In 1550 Hooper, 
already highly distinguished as a preacher, was offered 
a bishopric. He declined, because he objected to the 
rules about vestments in the ordination service. A 
considerable quarrel arose over the matter, and both 
Peter Martyr and Bucer endeavoured to bring Hooper 
round, but he remained obstinate. It was not till 
March of the following year that he gave way. Nor 
did he after his appointment and consecration with- 
draw from his general attitude ; in which it need 
hardly be said that he had the vigorous support of 
John Knox. 

In 1551 a serious attempt was at last made to deal 
with the old-standing problem of harmonising the 
canon law with the civil law, a business for which 
it had been arranged repeatedly at recurring intervals 
that a commission of thirty-two should be chosen ; 
which, however, never seems to have got itself 
appointed till now, when it promptly delegated its 
duties to a committee of eight. The attempt was 
seriously made, but the result was abortive as far as 
legislation was concerned. 

The scheme which the committee evolved is known 



THE PURITAN EDDY 137 

as the " Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum," and 
was not so much a revision of the canon law as an 
attempt to construct a constitution for the Church on 
abstract principles. It was never made law ; it was 
never submitted to Convocation ; it had no practical 
influence whatever on the course of the Reformation ; 
but it illustrates the attitude of Cranmer, who seems 
beyond question to have been the guiding spirit in its 
construction. It does not appear to have entered into 
his scheme that there should be any curtailment of the 
old jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. The most 
remarkable feature, on the whole, appears to be the 
active revival of the old diocesan synods, in which the 
bishop should meet his clergy for discussion ; whereas 
(though here the intention is open to doubt) the pro- 
vincial Convocations were to be reduced to assemblies 
of the bishops of the two provinces, called by the 
archbishop " for grave cause " with the king's assent. 

More important, however, in fact, were the measures 
of 1552 — the Second Act of Uniformity, and the Second 
Prayer-Book ; and in 1553 the publication of the 
" Forty-Two Articles," of which the later Thirty-Nine 
were but a slight modification. 

This Second Act of Uniformity, passed early in the 
year, for the first time applied penalties for disobedi- 
ence to the laity. In its first shape the purport of 
the bill was to reaffirm the authority of the First 
Prayer-Book, leaving spiritual censure as the only 
punishment for lay recusancy. It was, however, 
transformed into a measure authorising a revised 
Prayer-Book not yet published, while explicitly stating 
that such changes as should therein appear would not 
imply defect in the book as already authorised, but 



138 CRANMER 

were to be made in order to guard against misunder- 
standing. Further, not only were the clergy who 
conducted services other than those authorised liable 
to heavy penalties as under the First Act of Uni- 
formity, but any of the laity who attended such 
services were made liable to imprisonment. The new 
Act, however, was not to come into operation till the 
close of the year. 

Whether the First Prayer-Book had been submitted 
to Convocation is a question on which the evidence is 
inconclusive. The volume of 1552 was not so sub- 
mitted ; explicitly, its authority was that of the king 
and Parliament. The revision appears to have been 
the work of the same committee which drew up the 
" Reformatio Legum," and to have been due partly to 
the criticisms of Martyr and Bucer, partly to the 
attitude of the Nonconformists, to whom a greater 
latitude was given than by any other enactment. In 
this connection it is important to note that the revisers, 
in opposition to this group, and notably to Knox and 
Hooper, inserted a rubric enjoining the posture of 
kneeling at the time of receiving the sacrament. A 
determined effort was made at the last moment to have 
this rubric rejected, but Cranmer stood firm, and, 
instead of that change, the " black rubric " was added, 
explaining or purporting to explain what that posture 
was not to be taken to imply. Extensive as the 
changes were in many respects, their total effect was 
to extend greater latitude to the advanced school, 
without drawing closer the restrictions on the oppo- 
site party ; portions of the service were modified so as 
to admit of, without insisting on, a Calvinistic inter- 
pretation; while no mention was made of sundry 



THE PURITAN EDDY 139 

ornaments and ceremonial details which had been 
expressly enjoined in the previous book. 

A few words should be added with regard to the 
Ordinal or Ordination Service — which had been issued 
as an addendum to the Prayer-Book in 1550, and now 
took a slightly amended form — as bearing on one of 
the vexed questions of ecclesiastical controversialists, 
the apostolic succession, denied by the Romanists to 
the Anglican clergy. One ceremony only, that of 
handing the chalice and the paten, is therein omitted 
which has been held necessary to the validity of ordin- 
ation ; nor is it possible to prove that this was in use 
earlier than the tenth century. A second question, 
however, arises as to whether it was the intention of 
the service to convey the apostolic succession. We 
have seen that in Henry's reign Cranmer himself had 
given it as his opinion that the prince could appoint 
clergy without the recognised rites ; but that in those 
rites the succession had been maintained, and that it 
was seemly and desirable that this should continue. 
The archbishop's view, however, was then overruled 
by the majority of his colleagues, and the necessity of 
maintaining the succession was upheld. There is no 
reason to suppose that Cranmer's views on this head 
had undergone a change ; in which case, evidently, 
not only the more conservative authorities, but those 
who thought with him, did intend that the succession 
should be preserved. Moreover, that formal intention 
is explicitly set forth in the preface. Hence, to 
invalidate the position, it would be necessary to show 
either that the Anglican Church as a body has at 
some time formally repudiated that intention ; or that 
bishops have been consecrated with the omission of 



140 CRANMER 

fundamental circumstances in the service, so invali- 
dating all ordinations at their hands ; or else to fall 
back on the contention that failure of intention on the 
part of any individual bishop would invalidate his 
ordinations. 

The final attempt of the reign at an exposition of 
religious principles, which should compass the great 
end of Uniformity, was the issuing of the Forty-Two 
Articles. These also were the work of the Prayer- 
Book revisers ; like that volume, they were not sub- 
mitted to Convocation, and were indeed published by 
order of the Council. They had been in preparation 
for some time, and underwent considerable modifi- 
cations after their first draft, partly in consequence of 
the Nonconformist criticisms, which had been invited. 
In principle they do not greatly differ from the Thirty- 
Nine which finally took their place, being manifestly, 
like the Prayer-Book itself, characterised by the desire 
of extending the utmost possible latitude, and making 
conformity possible even to the Days and Heaths on 
the one hand, and the Knoxes and Hoopers on the 
other. 

But now the reign of Josiah was drawing to a close : 
the hand of Death was heavy upon him. It cannot be 
said that that reign presents a pleasing picture ; rarely, 
indeed, has there been a more consistently inefficient 
and unprincipled Government than that of the Sey- 
mours and the Dudleys. That Government favoured 
the Reformation, and it was a practically inevitable 
corollary that there was much of what can only at the 
best be called grave unseemliness in the methods by 
which the movement was carried on. Those who 
resisted it were treated with a tyrannical harshness ; 



THE PURITAN EDDY 141 

it was utilised by the civil authorities for the purpose 
of private enrichment ; and of what was taken from 
the Church only a scandalously small proportion was 
devoted to charitable and educational objects ; though 
doubtless that small proportion, mainly in the form of 
grammar schools and hospitals, has proved fruitful of 
great good to the country. The destruction of altars 
and of images was carried out with indecent and 
lamentable violence and bigotry ; the public disputa- 
tions, as at Oxford, were conducted with a shocking 
disregard of good taste and dignity. 

Nevertheless, although the powers at work were too 
turbulent to be held restrained by any hand less firm 
and skilful than that of an Elizabeth, it is remarkable 
to observe what moderation was imported into the 
ends achieved. That primary feature of the English 
Reformation, the substitution of English for Latin in 
the services of the Church as in the Bible, was an 
indisputable good, save in the eyes of those who be- 
; lieve that all knowledge should be carefully withheld 
from the great mass of their fellows. Something of 
splendour, something of awe, was removed from the 
ceremonial, but far less than if the Puritans had had 
their full way. The Scriptures were restored to their 
place as the final authority ; but the voice of tradition 
was not allowed to be silenced. A comprehensive 
breadth was achieved, such as no other ecclesiastical 
organisation has compassed. The Church refused to 
pronounce dogmatically where reason and Scripture 
are inconclusive, or to affirm an infallible interpre- 
tation of ambiguous dicta. For those who held that 
the only alternative to the infallibility of Rome was 
the infallibility of Geneva, such an outcome was un- 



142 CRANMER 

satisfactory ; but the effect was, to include within the 
fold the great bulk of those who were not prepared to 
accept a pope at either extreme. 

Nor does it seem possible to question that for this 
great result Cranmer, stiffened by Ridley, may claim 
the chief, almost the entire credit. But for him, the 
Church would inevitably have been severed into the 
two camps, and the Reformation would either have 
been overturned or have taken the lines which it 
followed under Knox's leadership in Scotland. But 
Cranmer showed that there was a more excellent way. 
The hand that steered the barque was none too firm, 
yet it kept a true course through stormy seas. He 
did not, indeed, achieve such a harmony but that 
factions have ever since arisen periodically, crying 
that they alone have a right to march under the 
Church's banner, and bringing on themselves the 
retort that they have no business under that banner 
at all. But that is the inevitable result of compre- 
hension, and has been known to occur when a far 
more rigid agreement was enforced. If comprehension, 
coupled with historic continuity, are qualities to be 
desired, Cranmer's distinction is as honourable as it 
is unique ; since, but for him, one or other of the two 
would assuredly have been lost to the Anglican Church. 
As it was, he preserved them both, and after the Marian 
cataclysm the Elizabethans established the structure 
which Cranmer had framed. 



CHAPTER XII 

Reaction and Counter-Reaction: 1553-1559 

Edward was dying. By the will of Henry viii. his 
sister Mary had been named successor to the throne. 
Mary had continued throughout the reign to adhere 
stubbornly to the Mass ; the prospects of the reformers 
under her sway looked extremely doubtful, and there 
were members of the Council who anticipated from it 
their own ruin. 

Northumberland — such was the title Warwick had 
taken to himself — was both ambitious and un- 
scrupulous. The line of succession was already dis- 
putable. The marriages of the mothers of Mary and 
Elizabeth had both been pronounced void. If they 
could be set aside, the next heir would be the grand- 
child of Henry's elder sister Margaret, who had married 
the king of Scots; and next, the grandchild of his 
younger sister Mary, who had married the Duke of 
Suffolk. Northumberland married his own son to the 
last, the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, proposing that Mary, 
Elizabeth, and Mary of Scotland should all be passed 
over, and that the king should set aside his father's 
will, but should act on that precedent and name the 
Lady Jane as his successor. 

The king was very well pleased ; one member only 

143 



144 CRANMER 

of the Council, Hales, absolutely declined assent ; one 
other, Cranmer, held out, even to tears, against the 
legality of the scheme, but finally yielded to the 
entreaties of Edward and the authority of the law 
officers on the technical point. But the plan was so 
utterly shameless that it defeated its own object. 
When Edward died, the attempt to supplant Mary 
proved hopelessly abortive, and she was hailed as 
sovereign with a heartiness which would probably 
have been altogether wanting if she had ascended the 
throne without opposition. 

That some reversal of ecclesiastical policy would 
follow was obvious. The bulk of the population had 
not accepted the new arrangements with enthusiasm. 
It was the turn of the party who had been held in 
subjection for the last six years; and the restitution 
of the deprived prelates, with the immediate restoration 
of the Mass, were matter of course. That a restrain- 
ing hand should be laid on those who had abetted the 
abortive treason of Northumberland, and on those who 
had been most actively hostile to Gardiner and Bonner 
and to the Mass itself, was absolutely reasonable. It 
was perhaps curious that while the Act of Uniformity 
was still the law of the land, the queen should by 
her own example practically assure immunity to those 
who set it at defiance ; but the anomaly was inevitable. 
Certainly, at the opening of Mary's reign, no one had 
cause to complain of undue severity on her part, of 
undue haste to take advantage of her party's return to 
power, or of her acting less generously or less toler- 
antly than her opponents had done. Northumberland 
was executed, and his principal associates were placed 
in confinement; the foreign Protestants who did not 



REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 145 

make haste to withdraw themselves were warned to 
disperse; and within a couple of months, Latimer, 
Hooper, Coverdale, and several others besides Cranmer 
and Ridley were imprisoned; but with no harsher 
treatment than had been shown to the deprived 
prelates in the preceding reign. 

Both Ridley and Cranmer had been markedly 
identified with the treason of the Dudleys; but it 
would seem as if Cranmer's plea in defence, that he 
had only given way under almost irresistible pressure, 
would have sufficed for his deliverance, but for one of 
those courageous avowals on his part which counter- 
balanced his strange submissions. It was rumoured 
that he had himself set up the Mass again, and his 
denial of the charge was so uncompromising and so 
defiant that he was sent to the Tower. 

The king had died on 6th July ; Mary was crowned 
on 1st October, and Parliament met on the 5th. The 
practical business before it was to annul the ecclesias- 
tical legislation of Edward's reign, and to restore the 
position as Henry viii. had left it, except that the Six 
Articles Act was not revived and the appropriated 
Church property was not restored. Further than this 
it hardly went for the time being. Convocation, 
sitting at the same period, showed an immediate 
inclination to welcome the reaction, but not without 
hot debates, in which some of the reformers showed 
the courage of their opinions. 

Hardly, however, had the year closed, when matters 
assumed a much more threatening aspect. Such hope- 
ful possibilities as Mary's accession had offered were 
wrecked over the Spanish marriage. A union between 
her and Philip, the prince of Spain, son of the 



146 CRANMER 

Emperor, was in course of negotiation ; and in the 
eyes of the whole British nation the plan was 
anathema. Gardiner, now at the head of the Council, 
would have been well enough pleased to avoid it 
altogether ; as it was, he could only insist upon such 
conditions as might decently safeguard the realm from 
foreign domination. But nothing could remove the 
suspicion that the ultimate effect of the marriage 
would be to convert England into an appanage of 
Spain. The general sentiment found vent in Sir 
Thomas Wyatt's rising. For a brief moment, as the 
insurgents approached London, it seemed as if Mary's 
throne was tottering. Her royal display of courage, 
her bold appeal to the citizens of London, saved her. 
The rising was a failure. But it had the direct effect 
of ending the policy of clemency. Lady Jane, most 
innocent of traitors, was led to the block ; many more 
were executed. There was still nothing savage or 
abnormal in the severity exercised. Throughout the 
year 1554 the attitude of the queen and her 
advisers presents itself as that of a Government which 
knew that one main feature of its policy was intensely 
unpopular, that there existed many miscellaneous 
grounds of discontent, and that it was necessary to 
make a display of the armed hand. It was no longer 
safe to be magnanimous ; more than that, there was a 
plausible excuse for retaliatory harshness even where 
milder counsels could involve no risk. 

Thus the year had hardly begun, Wyatt had hardly 
fallen, when the reforming clergy began to feel the 
force of the return to the nominal conditions of 
Henry's last years. Seven bishops were deprived, on 
the ground of marriage or of false views on the 



REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 147 

sacrament, or both. Many of the parish clergy were 
deprived in like manner for having married. The 
number who so suffered is sometimes stated in very 
startling figures; on the whole, there is much to be 
said for the estimate that one in every five of the 
whole body was so deprived. In the argument, how- 
ever, which disputes a larger proportion, one point 
seems to have been left out of count. It is remarked 
that, apart from the numbers who personally held 
to celibacy as a point of conscience, it is scarcely 
likely that so large a body would have taken to them- 
selves wives in so short a time. It should, however, be 
remembered that during a great part of Henry's reign 
marriage of the secular clergy had been not unusual — 
as, for instance, Cranmer himself was married. These 
men had been compelled under the Six Articles to part 
from their wives, who had returned to them as soon 
as that Act was repealed. It is not as though the 
whole of the clergy had been actually celibate until 
the legitimation of such contracts in Edward's second 
year. 

However, when all possible allowance is made for 
exaggeration, to penalise so large a body of persons who 
had acted not only with the authority of Parliament 
and Crown, but also in accord with the formal senti- 
ment of Convocation, was a step of excessive harsh- 
ness ; and harshness was now the order of the day. 
That severity had the support of Parliament ; but 
Parliaments were still, as they had been since Crom- 
well applied them to the purpose of giving a consti- 
tutional aspect to the royal mandates, composed in 
such manner that they might confirm the policy of 
the Government. There was a limit to their sub- 



148 CRANMER 

servience, which was always reached when their purses 
were threatened; but otherwise, the mutterings of 
parliamentary resistance were ominous of a storm of 
indignation outside. So now, if the question of restor- 
ing Church property was mooted, Parliament gave an 
emphatic negative, while cheerfully endorsing the 
reversal of the general policy of the last seven 
years. 

In July the Spanish marriage was celebrated, just 
twelve months after Edward's death; and from that 
time forward that great portion of the people which 
was, broadly speaking, indifferent to religious reforms 
as such, is found regarding the Government with 
steadily increasing suspicion and dislike. The reaction 
had reached the limit of approval ; it was soon to pass 
the bounds of even a moderately willing acquiescence. 
In fact, the Spanish marriage was perhaps accidentally 
something of a turning-point with the queen's own 
policy. Hitherto, there had been a show of maintain- 
ing Henry's attitude, the attitude in which he had 
always had Gardiner's support, of Supreme Head of a 
Church which had rejected the papal yoke without 
change of doctrine. Now, however, it seemed clear 
that there was to be a restoration of papal authority. 
A papal legate was again to be seen in England; 
there were ominous hints of revived penalties for the 
heretics, who were understood to include the reformers 
in general. In early days Gardiner had stood for the 
nation against Roman dominion — now he seems to 
have fallen back on the belief that the Roman 
dominion was a condition of suppressing the revolution 
which he accounted the greater evil. Nor is it hard 
to find excuse for him. The revolution had insulted 



REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 149 

him, silenced him, treated him as an enemy. Gardiner 
was no saint. He was not bloodthirsty or par- 
ticularly revengeful ; but neither was he particularly 
forgiving or naturally tender-hearted. His instincts 
were just, but his justice was always tempered by 
policy. Now he had been warped by the injustice he ' 
had himself suffered, and was ready to play the part 
of an embittered reactionary. Reconciliation with 
Rome involved a somewhat startling change of front 
in the man who had virtually told Clement VII. that 
unless he agreed to annul the marriage of Henry with 
Mary's mother, England would discard his authority. 
But Mary herself was responsible for the policy of her 
reign. As with her father before her and her sister 
after her, her will was supreme. And her heart was 
set on the reconciliation, and on the purging of heresy. 
Reconciliation to be effected through the medium of her 
cousin Cardinal Pole had been under discussion ever 
since her brother's death ; and now his arrival as papal 
legate was preceded by an ominous activity on the 
part of the reactionary bishops — notably Bonner — in 
the visitation of their dioceses. 

November saw the arrival of Pole with great honour, 
and the assembly of Paliament. The Houses presented 
a supplication to the king and queen, promising to revoke 
all laws and ordinances which had been made against 
the papal authority, and entreating to be received again 
as repentant children into the bosom of the Church, 
The reconciliation was completed with much ceremoni- 
ous jubilation ; and on the following Sunday Gardiner 
recanted from the pulpit the principle of which he had 
for so many years been one of the foremost champions. 
Parliament then forthwith proceeded to renew the old 



ISO CRANMER 

Lollard heresy laws, and to revoke all Henry's 
ecclesiastical legislation subsequent to his twentieth 
year — in other words, the whole legislative Reforma- 
tion ; with one exception, since all holders of what had 
been Church lands were confirmed in their possession. 
Restitution was not included in the pious intent of 
Rome's repentant children. 

So ended, for the time, the breach with Rome ; so 
was ushered in the day of purging, with hymns of 
triumph for the return of the lost sheep to the fold. 
From prison, however, came the voice of the reformers 
— the voice of stubborn challenge — challenge which 
was to take a very practical shape. Gardiner had 
stood in the pulpit of St. Paul's to declare that his 
whole career under Henry had been an error ; but he 
could not undo the work in which he had taken so 
large a part. How far he was responsible for the 
terrible chapter of history now to open, it is hard to tell. 
Hitherto it was due to him in no small degree that 
there had remained at least traces of statesmanship in 
the conduct of affairs. It was he who had so fenced 
round the marriage treaty as to minimise Philip's 
power of interference with the English realm. His 
opposition to the Spanish interests may have still 
prevented him from acquiring his queen's complete 
confidence. Whether he ever attempted to check the 
torrent of the impending persecution is doubtful ; 
certainly it raged with sufficient severity while he was 
yet living ; yet it did not develop its most frenzied 
recklessness till he was gone. He, at any rate, was not 
its chief promoter. 

The terrible, tragic figure which occupied the English 
throne and dominated the drama was cast in a different 



REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 151 

mould. With a woman's heart, passionate and tender, 
she had learnt in suffering to steel herself against 
pity for herself or for others. A zealot with a mission 
to perform, she accounted the urgency of her own 
natural magnanimity as the Tempter's whisper. 
Scorned by the husband to whom she was devoted, 
she would fain have won the love of her people, yet 
for her people's good, as she deemed it, she chose rather 
to be clothed in their hate. Not hers was the callous 
tyranny of her father, the cold-blooded policy of a 
Thomas Cromwell, the lust of cruelty of an Alva. 
Not hers even the grim triumph with which the 
Puritan Fathers gave the sons and daughters of Belial 
to the flames as an acceptable sacrifice to the Lord of 
hosts. But hers it was to smite, relentless and unspar- 
ing, rending her own heart with every stroke ; losing, 
in the performance of the ghastly duty she had con- 
ceived for herself, love and honour and name and 
fame; and bringing on the cause, for which she had 
wrought the awful sacrifice, destruction more over- 
whelming than its bitterest enemies could have 
effected. 

The heresy laws came into force on January 20, 
■- 1555. The first victim was Rogers, who probably was 
the author of Matthew's Bible. He was burned at 
the stake on February 4. From that time forth the 
persecution continued, never slackening, but rather 
increasing in fury as the reign went on. During less 
than four years the number who perished in the flames 
was little if at all short of three hundred. In the first 
year there was something of discrimination. Many of 
the leaders of the Reformation were in prison already, 
and it was natural that they should be among the first 



152 CRANMER 

struck down. Hooper and Ferrar, Latimer and 
Ridley, all perished in this year; Cranmer in the 
following March ; Rogers, Taylor of Hadleigh, 
Saunders, Bradford were all prominent men; but 
with them died not a few undistinguished but 
stubborn followers of the new ways, here one and 
there another. By the end of the year, the men 
of mark as teachers and preachers, saving Cranmer, 
had either borne their witness, or placed themselves 
out of reach in Switzerland or Germany. But the tale 
of the burnings did not diminish ; as the individuals 
were less conspicuous, the effect was made up by 
martyrdoms of five, ten, twenty at a time, till the 
country was seething with disgust. 

It is singular to find that there is no possibility of 
attaching the responsibility to any group of persons. 
The Spaniards or the bishops, or both, along with 
Mary, are generally held accountable. Bonner, of 
London, acquired the same unenviable epithet as his 
royal mistress. Yet the Spaniards do not really seem 
to have encouraged the extreme of persecution ; 
Philip and Philip's father were politic enough to have 
some appreciation of the English temper. Pole 
obviously wished every available loophole to be left 
open for the evasion of enforcing the law. In 
Gardiner's own diocese of Winchester there was no 
execution for heresy while he lived. Bonner, on whose 
doings the martyrologists exercise their most lurid 
powers, left no stone unturned to enable those who 
were haled before him to preserve their liberty by 
recantation. In fact, if the apologists could be alto- 
gether credited, we should have to believe that it was 
the Commons who egged the queen on against the 



REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 153 

restraining influences of all those whom Protestant 
fanatics have preferred to reproach. 

It is reasonable and intelligible to believe that the 
moving spirit in the persecution was the queen her- 
self. For her, it was not a question of policy or 
popularity or personal vengeance ; it was a terrible 
conviction of a fearful duty, to save the souls of her 
people, purging the nation by fire. But, in fact, 
Parliament, bishops, and Spaniards, as well as Pole, 
were all consenting parties, though not eager. The 
effect of setting the heresy laws in motion was 
probably not realised. They had been there in 
Henry's time — they had been reinforced by the Six 
Articles ; but very few people had been put to death 
under them. The crack of the "whip with six 
strings" had usually sufficed to make its actual 
application superfluous. It is reasonable to suppose 
that Parliament and bishops alike anticipated a 
similar result now. On the other hand, the reformers 
had made for themselves not a few bitter enemies, who 
were not averse to seeing them individually suffer. 
Philip may have had a politic objection to the applica- 
tion in England of methods which he did not hesitate 
to enforce against the equally obstinate Dutch ; but it 
may be suspected that he cared little, and that the 
mild protests of the Spaniards were more for the sake 
of show, of diverting unpopularity, than anything 
else. As for Pole, his conscience was of the type 
which would have agreed with Mary, while his 
instincts were mild and gentle, so that he was unable 
to restrain while anxious to evade. 

Broadly speaking, it would appear that Mary, 
logically enough from her point of view, desired that 



154 CRANMER 

the laws should be rigorously enforced for the utter 
rooting out of heresy ; Gardiner and Bonner and the 
rest would have been satisfied with silencing the 
heretics. Unfortunately for the policy, the heretics 
declined to be silenced, and with unprecedented 
stubbornness preferred martyrdom to recantation. 
Where laws of this class have been placed on the 
statute-book, their effective application notoriously 
depends very greatly on the attitude of the officers 
who have to administer them, and a dozen informa- 
tions will be laid before one court for one that will be 
laid before another. So while it seems thoroughly 
unjust to accuse Bonner of a thirst for blood, his 
manner and methods encouraged the heresy-hunters, 
while those of others among his brethren tended to 
check them. This, coupled with the fact that London 
was always a hotbed of advanced opinions, sufficiently 
explains the very large proportion of martyrs who 
were put to death under Bonner's jurisdiction. 

Nor is it altogether fair to forget that recalcitrants 
who did happen to be brought before either Gardiner 
or Bonner were apt to take up their parable against 
those prelates personally with a freedom which Nathan 
or Micaiah might have envied, and which was hardly 
an incentive to leniency on the part of a choleric 
judge. Anyone who reads with an impartial mind 
the trial of Christian's comrade Faithful at Vanity 
Fair cannot help recognising that no judge could have 
shown mercy to the prisoner unless his temper had 
been superhuman; and the Puritan martyrs were no 
less vigorous than Faithful. 

However the blame is to be distributed for those 
four years of terror, the attempt to bring the Marian 



REACTION AND COUNTER-REACTION 155 

persecution into comparison with any other in the 
course of English history is futile. Rome had her 
martyrs under Elizabeth ; but half of them were, past 
question, actually mixed up with treasonous plots ; nor 
were there more of them in the aggregate during her 
five-and-forty years than in the four of the Marian 
persecution. The Scottish Covenanters experienced 
persecution, but in the eyes of their persecutors they 
were often active rebels. Under Mary, the issue was 
the plain and direct one of conscience. Here and 
there the offence was aggravated by a charge of 
having disputed the sovereign's legitimacy ; but there 
was no pretence that the penalties were incurred for 
anything but heresy, and no question that much, which 
was now called heresy had in the late reign been 
enjoined as orthodox. Political sects have been per- 
secuted in the name of religion, like the Lollards ; 
religious profession has been treated as a mark of poli- 
tical malevolence, as with the Jesuits ; but the martyrs 
of Mary's reign were burned uncompromisingly for 
religion and nothing else. Nor was the onslaught 
made upon extravagant doctrinaires. The crucial 
question habitually was whether the natural body and 
blood of Christ are in the sacrament. Nothing short 
of the unqualified doctrine of Transubstantiation was 
accepted, with submission to the authority of the pope. 
It was not an attack on Anabaptists or Calvinists or 
Puritans, but on the whole Reformation ; a campaign 
of the reactionary party in the Anglican Church 
against the reforming party in the Anglican Church ; 
an onslaught upon the position to which all but a few 
of the clergy had in fact conformed, though with vary- 
ing willingness or reluctance. The effect was to unite 



156 CRANMER 

the Mass and the Roman dominion inextricably in 
the popular mind, making it impossible ever to revert 
to the position of Henry. The heroic bearing of the 
martyrs themselves called forth a passion of horrified 
sympathy which a more commonplace harshness and 
a more commonplace suffering would never have 
evoked ; the doom of the primate of England, his 
waverings and his final triumphant humiliation, had 
an incalculable dramatic force which struck home as 
mere logic could never do. 

Hence the extraordinary effect of that persecution 
on the people at large. It may be doubted very much 
whether half of them had more than the vaguest 
glimmerings of perception of the theological difference 
between the Mass and the Communion service; but 
they connected the Mass with the persecuting faction, 
and everything associated with the Mass had the reek 
of Mary's fires clinging to it. Antagonism to Spain 
did the rest. Whether men called themselves Pro- 
testants or Catholics, whatever English people recog- 
nise as " popery " has been from that day to the great 
bulk of them an accursed thing. 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Least of the Martyrs: 1529-1556 

It has been said that the stout bearing of the martyrs, 
and the sympathy they won thereby, were of no little 
avail in turning the hearts of their countrymen from 
apathetic indifference, or even apathetic hostility, to 
warm partisanship. In all the years of the Reforma- 
tion, until 1555, there had been excitement, violence, 
zealotry on both sides, but not any general deep- 
rooted intensity of feeling. That was brought into 
being by the moral shock of the persecution, the force 
of which was indefinitely multiplied by the admiration 
its victims inspired. 

For the appeal of manifest heroism is well-nigh 
irresistible, and the martyrs, one after the other, stood 
revealed as heroes. In the stress of controversy, they 
had shown, it may be, baser qualities. Ridley could be 
harsh, Hooper narrow and pragmatical, Latimer inso- 
lent, as all men might know ; and the lesser folk had 
their normal failings. But now what all men saw or 
heard of was the unflinching courage, the unfaltering 
loyalty to truth, the unfailing dignity in the face of 
torture, temptation, and insult, which wiped out the 
memory, if any there were, of unheroic traits. They 
saw the wife of Rogers, surrounded by their eleven 

157 



158 CRANMER 

children, bidding her husband God-speed with words 
of encouragement. They saw Rowland Taylor take his 
daughter Mary in his arms, and kneel down with his 
wife to say the Lord's Prayer, while " the sheriff wept 
apace, and so did divers others of the company." 
They heard the jubilant words of Latimer to Ridley, 
triumphantly prophetic. They marked the same spirit 
again and again declaring itself as fresh victims were 
brought to the stake ; and they knew that those victims 
were martyrs and heroes in very deed. 

But — Cranmer ? 

We know what happens when a regiment that has 
won good repute and credit is smitten on some fatal 
day with that inexplicable madness called panic, and 
in one short hour tramples its honour in the dust; 
how many deeds of desperate daring it must accom- 
plish before it can wipe out that one blot on its fair 
fame. 

So was it with Cranmer. Of all men in the country, 
for him recantation was most morally inconceivable. 
It was he who step by step had seemed to guide the 
Reformation; who had justified each step with the 
authority of his great place; who avowed himself to 
have passed from error to truth, leading hosts in his 
train; who, when his enemies recovered power, had 
faced them and outreasoned them with a resolution 
that Latimer himself had not exceeded. That he 
should fail at the last ; that he should faint and turn 
back from the fiery trial that so many lesser men 
had faced without blenching — this was a thing not to 
be forgiven, and by men forgiveness is denied him, 
or such scant pardon is granted as may be joined 
with only half- repressed scorn. The brand of the 



THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 159 

craven is upon him ; nor have the flames of Oxford 
erased it. 

Thus it is that among the men who worked for the 
Reformation the ill-fated archbishop has the fewest 
friends. Henry and Cromwell have their apologists — 
rather, to avoid possible misapprehension, let us say 
their zealous champions ; as on the other side, Gardiner 
and Bonner have their defenders. Even their enemies 
have words of reluctant praise for Latimer and Ridley, 
and for Hooper himself. Elizabeth and her ministers 
are judged by a frankly political standard, and receive 
the applause, if not always the esteem, of the historian. 
The Puritans have their partisans no less uncom- 
promising than their foes. But those who speak 
Cranmer's name, if they do not accompany it with 
positive railing, for the most part pronounce it with a 
significant shrug of the shoulders. 

For, to the extreme " Catholic " party, he is the man 
who betrayed the Church to Erastianism ; to the 
Puritans, he is a Mr. Facing-both-ways ; and to those 
who join neither extreme, he is the guide whose shame 
they cannot deny. Despite that great rallying of his 
courage, when he retracted his recantation and faced 
his doom, steadfast in self-abasement, every deed of 
his career is coloured by the one pitiful failure. 

Yet if he had died with Latimer a few months 
earlier — nay, if he had been peacefully released from 
the burden of life before Mary laid her hand upon the 
reformers — the judgment passed on him would have 
been far different. None indeed would have ranked 
him among those strong spirits of iron will who, like a 
Luther, stand out as giants, dwarfing those who are set 
beside them : rather his name might have been coupled 



160 CRANMER 

with Melanchthon — of the type that are made to be, 
I not leaders, but counsellors. For, be it observed, the 
primary business of a leader is to make up his own 
mind ; the primary business of the counsellor is to 
provide the data which shall enable the leader to 
make up his mind wisely — to influence, not to control. 
I Throughout Henry's reign, Cranmer, like everyone 
else, was the king's servant. The king took his 
advice or not, as it pleased him. With the exception 
of More and Fisher, there was no politician and no 
ecclesiastical dignitary who ventured on open resist- 
ance to the tyrant; not Gardiner nor Stokesley nor 
Tunstall, not even Wolsey or Cromwell. Once, at 
least, in his opposition to the Six Articles, Cranmer 
went further than the rest ever ventured ; and in the 
matter of the King's Book he displayed undeniable 
courage. 

Cranmer's whole career postulates his belief that the 
national sovereign is at the head of the ecclesiastical 
no less than of the civil polity. The theory may be 
right or wrong; but to hold it and act on it cannot 
with any show of justice be called a sign of pliancy 
or subserviency. He approved the abolition of the 
monastic system, and therein is certainly no cause 
of reproach. As for the methods by which it was 
carried out, it is possible that a stronger man in his 
place might have fought Cromwell ; but no one gave 
sign of such independence of spirit. And he did, as 
many another did not, use his powers of persuasion 
for the diversion of the property seized into sound 
educational channels. He, like his neighbours, adminis- 
tered the laws against heresy of the extreme type ; so 
did Latimer, so did More. None of them were suffi- 



THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 161 

ciently in advance of their day to have grasped the 
conception of more than a limited toleration. But he 
openly opposed the passing of statutes for increasing 
and multiplying penalties for religious offences. If he 
urged the dissemination of the translated Scriptures, 
the introduction of English services, the admission of 
modified doctrines, the suppression of some practices 
which the German Protestants had long before 
denounced without sparing; yet in all this there is 
nothing to which anyone who to-day claims to belong 
to the Anglican communion can possibly raise objec- 
tion. Cranmer's offence against Rome is obvious ; but 
against the most extreme section of the Anglican body 
it cannot be shown during Henry's reign to have 
amounted to more than this — that he did not stand up 
alone against the spoliation, and that he made the 
theory of secular supremacy his own. 

For not resisting the spoliation, it is unwarrantable 
to reproach him, save as sharing in a universal con- 
demnation. He would have stood alone had he done 
so, and have lost such chance as he had of exercising a 
practical influence. For the Royal supremacy, Fisher 
and More rejected it on principle, and gave their lives 
in witness; the rest who rejected it on principle sub- 
mitted to it in fact. Cranmer, so far from rejecting it, 
held it as a cardinal principle. Ought he then, like 
Becket, to have changed his principles when he donned 
the pallium ? On no other ground can he be blamed 
for maintaining them. Those Churchmen who hold 
that the Church is above the State, and that its 
subordination is a bondage sanctioned by physical 
force only, are justified in counting Cranmer among 
the enemy, but an open and avowed enemy on the 



162 CRANMER 

plain ground of conscientious conviction. Throughout 
Henry's reign, from the hour when Cranmer became 
archbishop, no prominent ecclesiastic, with the single 
exception of Fisher, is less open than Cranmer to the 
charge of having subordinated his genuine convictions 
to his personal advantage in supporting Henry's line of 
action. 

Nor from the reformer's point of view can Cranmer 
fairly be blamed. The movement of his mind was 
very gradual. It was of that academic cast which 
weighs and deliberates, and seeks for new lights and 
fresh data, and for ever finds an infinite deal to be said 
on both sides ; which perceives that a vast number of 
questions cannot be despatched with swift and uncom- 
promising security. More and more, no doubt, he found 
the balance weighing in favour of the progressive as 
against the established views, and endeavoured to 
persuade the king to allow them a hearing. But he 
was not convinced that the established views were 
wrong. He did not affirm one doctrine in public while 
believing another in private ; though he did not 
challenge destruction as the champion of toleration. 
He was content to let opinions mature into convictions 
before insisting on them, or committing himself to them 
irredeemably. He did not, in short, display the 
conspicuous courage which would have demanded 
universal acclamation, but he did not carry submission 
beyond the logical claims of his postulate concerning 
Sovereignty. 

When his master died, and was succeeded on the 
throne by a boy, Cranmer's position was altered. He 
could not now escape assuming the functions of a 
leader. His duty was no longer ended when he had 



THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 163 

counselled his sovereign; actual initiative was forced 
upon him, and the task was one for which he was not 
naturally fitted. Nevertheless, his achievement was 
remarkable. It was due to his guidance that the 
Anglican Church neither broke with the past as did 
the Calvinistic and in a less degree the Lutheran 
bodies, nor rejected the new criticism like the reaction- 
aries, but so moulded its reformation — the formularies, 
the Prayer-Book, the practices enjoined or permitted 
— as to remain sufficiently acceptable if not actually 
satisfactory to moderate men of all parties. If the 
intention to maintain the Church as a comprehensive 
body was a right one — if it was right that she should 
rather meet the needs of the bulk of those who call 
themselves Christians than the desires of a lesser 
body — he deserves the highest praise for holding fast 
to it, in the face of increasing pressure driving him 
to a rejection either of Protestantism or of Catholicity. 
He succeeded in evolving a Church which was at once 
Catholic and Protestant. But for Cranmer and Ridley, 
the Hoopers, the Knoxes, and the Peter Martyrs would 
have dominated the reforming party altogether, and the 
moderate men would have been reabsorbed by the party 
of reaction. No small praise is due to the man who, 
forced by circumstances into a field of action for which 
he was ill-adapted, was yet so successful in the actual 
results of his work. 

But if we turn to his personal record, the record of 
the man, not the statesman, how would he have stood 
in our estimation if he had never been brought to the 
last crucial test ? Did he in the service of his master 
demean himself in unbecoming fashion ? 

Cranmer was conspicuously deficient in one quality 



1 64 CRANMER 

which is absolutely essential to a great career — self- [ 
reliance. When once he had been brought into contact 
with Henry, the king both fascinated and dominated 
him. There were men who did the king's bidding 
because he was a tyrant whom it was safer to obey ; 
there were others whose downright loyalty to him 
would have made them commit treason against their 
country or their own consciences, and to their own 
destruction, if he might profit thereby. Cranmer 
appears to have been neither a time-server nor a 
devotee of the latter type, but to have been, as it were, 
mesmerised. It is not altogether rare to find people in 
private life whose will and conscience become the 
reflexion of someone else's will and conscience; here 
and there, too, a great statesman seems to produce 
such an effect on some of his followers ; but the sub- 
mission of an intellect so subtle and a conscience so 
delicate as Cranmer's affords a somewhat pathetic 
psychological study. The extreme point appears to 
have been reached on the occasions of the condemna- 
tion of Anne Boleyn and of Thomas Cromwell. For 
both of these Cranmer undoubtedly had a warm 
personal friendship, and in them, as in the king, he 
inspired in turn a genuine affection. But when the king 
declared them guilty, Cranmer could only admit with 
tears and travail of soul, though unconvinced by evi- 
dence, that guilty they must be. The archbishop's 
weakness is neither admirable nor edifying ; but it is 
not born of fear, nor is it the politician's preference 
for expediency over right. It is the weakness of a 
man who never trusts his own judgment if it is 
opposed by that of another in whom he has learned 
to place implicit reliance. The whole tone of his 



THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 165 

dissertations on the religious questions of the time 
is in accord. There is no English ecclesiastic of the 
day with whom he fears an engagement ; but he 
cannot maintain an opinion against the king's decisive 
judgment. 

When the immediate domination of Henry's mind is 
withdrawn, Cranmer's doubts of the accepted positions 
immediately recover force. No fresh personality re- 
places that of the dead monarch, but Ridley is at hand 
to confirm and establish the expansion which Henry 
had repressed ; for Cranmer must needs have someone 
to lean on. He is in nowise one of the Titans, 
accumulating responsibilities on their own shoulders, 
hewing their way through dangers and difficulties, 
inspiring their followers with courage and enthusiasm ; 
but he is the captain of a band composed of most in- 
harmonious and incongruous elements which he does 
succeed in holding together over a decidedly arduous 
journey ; though he himself would have found his truer 
sphere in a college cloister. 

So when it came to the unhappy moment when 
Cranmer went with the rest of the Council and 
assented to Edward's will altering the succession, 
he acted as a man who cannot rely on his own judg- 
ment when he stands alone. He was not appealed to 
till the whole of the rest of the Council, with the excep- 
tion of Hales, had been brought into professed agree- 
ment ; and Ridley, whose courage has never been 
impugned, afforded him no support. A man of strong 
self-reliance would not have given way ; to do so was 
weak, but it was neither dishonest nor cowardly on the 
face of it. 

No one indeed would venture to claim for Cranmer 



1 66 CRANMER 

that his conduct while he was archbishop ever verged 
on the heroic. Yet more than once he had taken no 
small risk in attempting to dissuade Henry from some 
course on which he was bent; and twice at least, in 
the matters of the Six Articles and the King's Book, 
his enemies prematurely rejoiced in the belief that 
his boldness had wrought his destruction. They were 
wrong. Henry was too fond of him to be angry. 
But it argues a considerable moral courage in a man 
naturally timid and hesitating that he should have run 
such a risk ; and once again, at least, there is no gain- 
saying his courage when he was charged on Mary's 
accession with having set up the Mass again at Canter- 
bury. He could not indeed without shame have 
avowed such a step ; yet he had the opportunity 
of quitting the country, an opportunity which many 
others seized without hint of reproach, and he deliber- 
ately elected to stand by his principles and face the 
danger rather than fly. Nor did he fail or show sign 
of yielding till he had been for more than two years a 
prisoner, and the fires of the persecution had been 
raging for close on a twelvemonth. 

That declaration against the Mass opens the last act 
in Cranmer's tragedy; immediately after it he was 
committed to the Tower, and remained a prisoner till 
his life's end. True to his theory that the appoint- 
ment of bishops to their Sees lay with the sovereign, 
he had required new licences to be issued when Edward's 
reign commenced ; and he took for granted now that 
some other would take his place at Canterbury, though 
it was not till his death that the appointment was 
officially given to Pole. He was attainted for his 
share in the Dudley plot, but seems to have had some 



THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 167 

hope that he would after all be allowed to retire into 
private life. For he asked leave to " open his mind on 
matters of religion " to the queen, that so he might feel 
himself discharged of his own duty, and free from any 
further call to interfere in public affairs, inasmuch 
as submission in act to the direct mandate of the 
sovereign was part and parcel of his theory of the 
Supremacy. Leave, however, was not given. 

For some time he and Ridley were associated in the 
Tower; later Latimer and Bradford shared their 
chamber. There was no fluctuation in any of them. 
In April 1554 the three bishops were transferred to 
Oxford, where they were called on to enter on a 
disputation, separately, with a body of delegates. 
They maintained their position, with no more hint 
of wavering on Cranmer's part than on that of his 
colleagues, though his demeanour was marked by ex- 
treme patience and no little dignity, while the other 
two adopted a somewhat more defiant tone. As a 
result, all three were found guilty of heresy. 

Almost with the new year the great persecution 
opened : Rogers, Hooper, and Taylor being the earliest 
victims. The three at Oxford had been formally con- 
demned as heretics, after the disputation in 1554, but 
their condemnation was set aside, as having been prior 
to the reconciliation between the Church of England 
and Rome. Rome was to take them in hand. It was 
not till September that Cranmer, the first of them, was 
called to appear before the pope at Rome, the pontiff 
delegating the conduct of the trial to a Court to be 
held at Oxford, where he was represented by the 
Bishop of Gloucester. 

Cranmer appeared, but refused to acknowledge the 



1 68 CRANMER 

papal jurisdiction, giving his answers as a public pro- 
fession, not as admitting the Court's right to demand 
them. He refused to allow that in seceding from 
Rome he was acting as a schismatic. There was 
plenty of evidence that he had discarded the Roman 
authority, that he had maintained doctrines now called 
heretical, and that he had a wife ; none of which 
points Cranmer disputed, but justified all of them. 
There was practically no support of the further charge 
that he had compelled subscription to articles, though 
the dividing line between persuasion and compulsion 
is not always easy to draw. 

The Court was not to adjudicate ; it was to lay the 
results of the trial before the pope himself ; it was the 
pope himself who condemned Cranmer, and handed 
him over to the secular arm. The spectacle of the 
Bishop of Rome passing judgment on the Metropolitan 
of England, papa alterius orbis, was impressive ; its 
effect on Nationalist sentiments, already seriously 
stirred by the Spanish match, must have been tre- 
mendous. The claim of absolute submission to Rome 
had never before been put forward in a shape so 
uncompromising and so tangible. 

Ridley and Latimer met their fate before the pope 
had pronounced his condemnation of Cranmer. For 
dealing with them, legatine authority was sufficient. 
They were condemned, and burned on October 16. 
Cranmer is said to have witnessed their end from the 
roof of his prison. 

Until this time there had been no hint of failure on 
Cranmer's part. Even at the time of his trial he wrote 
to the queen in terms which amounted to a reproof for 
subjecting the English Crown to Rome. But when 



THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 169 

December came, there were signs of wavering. He 
asked to be allowed to confer with Tunstall, who, un- 
able to travel, remarked that Cranmer would have 
been more likely to shake him than he Cranmer. Pole 
was no more willing to face discussion. A Spaniard 
named Soto was sent to him, ineffectually ; then 
another, Garcia. It has been said, and seems con- 
sonant with Cranmer's character, that while he re- 
jected the arguments of these divines, he broke down 
under his need of personal affection and moral sup- 
port ; for it had always been characteristic of him that 
he should enjoy the warmest affection from his inti- 
mates and from those of his own household. Now his 
isolation told on his emotional nature : not torture, but 
mere unkindness, overthrew him. 

At any rate, about the end of January he wrote a 
submission. It did not take him far, hardly, indeed, 
beyond the conclusion deducible from his theory of the 
Royal Supremacy. In virtue of the Royal command, he 
would admit the papal supremacy so far as the laws of 
God and the realm permit. A few days later came a 
second submission, without the qualification ; and it is 
said that he began to attend Mass. The only result, 
however, was his public degradation ; a performance 
carried through with much unhappiness by Thirlby, 
and much open and coarse satisfaction by Bonner, 
Thirlby 's colleague. On this occasion Cranmer claimed 
the right of appeal to a General Council, and once 
more declared that he would never say Mass. 

The appeal he had already had prepared, expressing 
his principle that what was laid down in Scripture 
and by the Fathers of the Church was of authority, 
but that the doctrines he had rejected, now called 



170 CRANMER 

heretical, were modern innovations. The appeal was, 
of course, disallowed, or rather ignored. 

Two more " submissions " followed. In the first he 
again accepted the Royal mandate, but appealed to a 
General Council to decide the questions of doctrine. 
The second was a declaration that he held the Catholic 
Faith as it had been from the beginning. The ground 
taken in the first submission and in the long-prepared 
appeal was maintained. Until this time, in fact — 
February 16 — the utmost concession extracted from 
him, the utmost deviation from his past attitude, was 
the admission that papal supremacy might be estab- 
lished by Royal authority. 

The reply was a writ to the mayor and bailiffs of 
Oxford to burn Cranmer, issued on February 24. 

Within four weeks Cranmer met his doom, and the 
events of that brief period are extremely puzzling. 
He was removed from the prison to the deanery at 
Christ Church. The foreign friars at Oxford sur- 
rounded him and plied him with persuasion and argu- 
ment ; with the seductive prospect of release, and the 
terror of the death which might be escaped by a 
full and complete recantation. If the Court was 
responsible, its perfidy is unspeakable ; but it is more 
likely that the friars persuaded themselves that they 
really might save Cranmer's life by getting the re- 
cantation, and must at any rate further the cause 
thereby. 

Whatever the motive, Cranmer was now at last 
overcome. A sweeping recantation of his " heresies," 
including an unqualified admission of the papal su- 
premacy, was submitted to him, signed by him, and 
printed for publication. The issue was promptly sup- 



THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 171 

pressed, for reasons which can only be guessed at. The 
theory that it was a sheer forgery is not tenable ; 
perhaps the most plausible explanation suggested is 
that the public was thought likely to regard it as a 
forgery, because it was attested only by the friar 
Garcia and one Sidall, who was an obscure person. 

In place of this recantation, however, a new docu- 
ment was now submitted to the hapless prisoner ; no 
mere retractation of opinions, but full of self-denuncia- 
tion, humiliation, self-condemnation of the most abject 
kind. 

This Cranmer wrote out and signed with his own 
hand. The thing is almost inconceivable. There have 
been men who have committed great crimes, and in 
the overwhelming passion of remorse and self-loathing 
have denounced themselves in such unmeasured terms ; 
but since the days of Peter's denial, it may be doubted 
if anyone has in such abject terms renounced principles 
which he had maintained and still believed in through 
good report and evil report ; unless it may be actually 
in the torture chamber, or under such awful stress of 
physical terror as at times may unhinge the reason, or 
from that sheer cynicism which holds conscience and 
self-respect as a feather's weight in the balance against 
physical ease. It seems as though in that hour of 
utter shame the mere degree of degradation ceased to 
be of any moment. Had Cranmer won his release 
thereby, had he held by that most pitiful act, his 
portion would have been shame for ever. 

But, broken as he was, fallen as he seemed beyond 
redemption, redemption yet was his. That recanta- 
tion demonstrates past question, not the character of, 
the man, but the collapse of his nerve, the natural 1 



172 CRANMER 

infirmity with which he was born, the physical terror 
of suffering, which is the curse of many sensitive 
natures ; the mastery whereof is the moral quality of 
courage. A great thing is the courage of those who 
do not know what fear is, a happy endowment rightly 
held in honour ; but greater in the moral scale is the 
courage of those who defy and conquer the fear that is 
griping at their heart. That fearfulness was Cran- 
mer's ; and in those sad March days, he, who had for 
so many years held his infirmity under resolute control, 
for a brief space gave way utterly ; but it was not for 
long. He was yet to rise again and grapple with it, 
and be victor in the last great hour. 

What passed in the few days between the recanta- 
tion and the day of doom none knows with certainty. 
On the 18th he signed ; on the 21st he was taken from 
his prison, that he might make his recantation in public 
and pass to the stake. He had given no sign ; it is 
only clear that in whatever passed he did not disturb 
the impression that all was what his executioners called 
well with him. We need not ask whether this was 
because his resolution was framed only when he had 
lost the last shred of hope, or because he desired only 
to ensure the opportunity of giving it effect. It would 
seem that no precise notification was given him either 
of the hopelessness of pardon or of the time of his 
doom. On the third morrow after the final fall, a 
mournful procession passed under frowning skies 
through driving rain from the prison to St. Mary's 
Church ; the stricken prelate walking with a Spanish 
friar on either side. There was spoken over him, 
while often the tears rolled down his face as down the 
face of a child, the oration which should justify his 



THE LEAST OF THE MARTYRS 173 

doom to men. When it was over, he was bidden to 
speak that all might know the reality of his con- 
version and his repentance. So he arose, and his 
repentance was manifest to all. The cry of the 
penitent sinner falling before the Throne of Mercy 
was a voice of sublime humiliation : the exhortation 
which followed was in all things fitting. Then came 
the confession of faith, at first in general terms. And 
now the time was come when he should confirm his 
renunciation of the heresies he had taught, and furnish 
the final triumph of his enemies. But his penitence 
was not for those "heresies," but for his denial of 
them. For a moment the meaning did not reach his 
hearers as he declared that what most of all troubled 
him was those writings which he had put forth 
contrary to the truth. The sudden shock of amaze- 
ment came when he pronounced those writings to be 
the "bills" to which he had set his hand since his I 
degradation " for fear of death, and to save my life if 
it might be." Without faltering, without palliation, 
he made full confession of the enormity of his sin, 
proclaiming that sign by which all men should know 
for ever that it was of this in very deed that he 
repented. " As my hand offended in writing contrary 
to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished. 
For if I may come to the fire it shall first be burned." 
A few more words rejecting the pope and all his false 
doctrines, affirming once more that doctrine of the 
sacrament which he had put forth in his book, and 
the authorities hastily silenced him and hurried him 
from the pulpit. So quickly did he move towards the 
place of execution that the friars had much ado to 
keep up with him, struggling vainly to extract word 



174 CRANMER 

or sign by which the tremendous revulsion of his con- 
fession might be counteracted. Now, at least, his 
resolution was absolutely fast. He would pretend no 
excuse or palliation for the sin of his recantation : he 
would withdraw no syllable of its cancelment. They 
bound him to the stake, and he shook hands with 
many of the bystanders. The fire was kindled. 
Cranmer thrust his right hand into the flame, crying 
with a loud voice, " This hand hath offended," and so 
held it, withdrawing it only once, to wipe his brow; 
and all men might see it burning before the flame 
touched any other part of him. So he stood, lapped in 
fire, and neither spoke nor stirred again. 

Thus died Thomas Cranmer, whose elegy sounds 
through the ages in the music of the English liturgy ; 
highest of all the martyrs in station, accounted lowest 
of all in honour. For many that are first shall be last, 
and the last first. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Epilogue: The Reformation in England 

The death of Mary was followed on the next day 
by that of Pole. The Romanist regime was over. 
Elizabeth set herself to the task of pacification with 
infinite tact and policy. Virtually she took Cranmer's 
scheme, and with slight modification made it her own. 
The Reformation, uncertain in its course before, stayed 
but rendered inevitable by Mary, became an accom- 
plished fact. It only remained for Rome to widen the 
chasm — to confirm the hostility of the revolted nation ; 
which, largely by the instrumentality of Douay, she 
very effectually did. Neither the details of the formal 
settlement nor its subsequent developments are within 
the scope of this volume ; but it remains to state some 
general conclusions. 

In England, more than elsewhere, the Reformation 
means two different things according to the point of 
view : the Reformation official and the Reformation 
popular. 

The official Reformation is concerned with the 
Anglican body, with political and constitutional 
questions affecting its governing authority, its 
organisation, its control of temporalities, its dogmatic 
and ceremonial limitations. 

175 



i;6 CRANMER 

The popular Reformation regards these things as in 
varying degrees accidents. Its essence lies in the 
application to religion of the peculiarly British 
doctrine of Liberty, which may be expressed in the 
formula, " I have a right to judge for myself and to 
insist on your agreeing with me" ; with a corollary, 
that no foreigner has any business to interfere. This 
process results in a general horror, not of any logical 
system, but of two vague ideas labelled " Popery " and 
" Priestcraft " ; so that whatsoever falls under either 
category stands ipso facto condemned. 

Officially, then, the Reformation was in its primary 
stage political; it started from the rejection, by and 
on behalf of both the clergy and the temporal State, 
of any and every claim to authority in England put 
forward by the papal power. 

In its constitutional aspect it dealt with the 
relations of Church and State ; and here the funda- 
mental characteristic of the Reformation is the un- 
qualified assertion by the State of its right to control 
every branch of the ecclesiastical organisation. That 
the claim was made in great part on behalf of the 
Crown rather than of the State at large was due to 
the general political predominance of the Crown at the 
time. Hence, the sovereign claimed and enforced the 
power of controlling and appropriating ecclesiastical 
revenues, of nominating the bishops, of authorising 
formularies, of constituting ecclesiastical courts, of 
disallowing the proceedings of Convoci^on, of abolish- 
ing benefit of clergy. Some of these things were done 
by direct Royal authority, some by process of Parlia- 
ment ; all were effective expressions of the subordina- 
tion of the ecclesiastical organisation to the temporal 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 177 

Sovereign. How far these things had the assent of 
the clergy is another matter, and one which the State 
was free to ignore. From the point of view of the 
State, they were all merely the application in practice 
of theoretical rights always inherent in the Sovereign, 
though not always exercised and occasionally dis- 
puted. 

In this theory of the supremacy of the temporal 
power the clergy were forced to acquiesce, however 
reluctantly. The real change which had come about 
was that the State had finally and decisively proved 
itself the stronger power. Hitherto the clergy had 
been able to do battle with the secular claims more or 
less successfully. The spiritual armoury of excom- 
munication and penance had been matched against 
material weapons. Now, princes, nobles, and commons 
were ready to brave the ecclesiastical anathemas. 
However unwilling to admit the justice or the fitness 
of the new order, the clerg}^ had no choice but sub- 
mission to the accomplished fact. The secular was 
master of the spiritual. 

But while this change was probably inevitable, it 
had been facilitated by the unwonted attitude of the 
foremost ecclesiastic in the country. No small share 
of the animosity to Cranmer so often displayed by 
that party in the Church which likes to label itself 
Catholic, is due to the sense that he was a traitor to 
his Order ; that it was his prime duty to maintain its 
traditional rights ; that he did in fact deliberately 
guide it to surrender. 

Nearly four centuries before, another Henry was 
seated on the English throne. At his right hand was a 
devoted, even an unscrupulous follower, as active in 
12 



178 CRANMER 

the king's support against the clergy as against the 
barons. Him the king made primate; and straight- 
way Thomas of Canterbury became the champion of 
the Order, the most uncompromising claimant for its 
rights that it had ever known. The later Henry 
made no such blunder. He chose no militant aspirant 
to martyrdom ; it may indeed be doubted whether 
such a man was to be found. Those who at a later 
date espoused the cause of Rome, now all supported 
Henry. At the time, Fisher was almost the only 
prelate with the convictions, the courage, and the 
ability for the part of a Becket ; which was absolutely 
the last for which the new Thomas of Canterbury was 
fitted. His mind was of the strictly academic type, his 
temper of the most peaceable, his self-reliance greatly 
lacking. It never occurred to him to regard himself as 
the captain of a spiritual host, struggling for its rights 
against the encroachments of the secular power ; before 
he was made primate, the Church was to him simply a 
branch of the State Service, and his view was rather 
confirmed than altered by his promotion. It is easier 
to forgive a Latimer, a free lance with a strong vein 
of Quixotism, or a Hooper who might almost be called 
a frank mutineer ; but, unhappily for Cranmer, his 
interest lay on the side which he espoused, and his 
credit — very unfairly as it would seem — has suffered 
gravely in consequence. 

This conception of the relation between the 
Sovereign and the ecclesiastical body was not Cranmer 's 
creation ; but it controlled his entire policy. As arch- 
bishop, he accounted himself the chief counsellor of 
the Crown in matters ecclesiastical; but he took for 
granted that the Crown was free to accept or reject 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 179 

his advice and require him to obey its decisions. 
Sometimes the Crown was graciously pleased to yield 
to his representations, as in the publication of the open 
Bible and the increasing use of the vernacular in the 
Church services. Sometimes it gave him practically a 
free hand, as in the compilation of the reformed liturgy. 
Sometimes it trampled on his advice, as in the case 
of the Six Articles. But this was an episode. The 
significant fact is that the ultimate reconstruction 
shaped in accordance with Cranmer's ideas much more 
than with those of any other individual. How far his 
personal views on dogma developed in the direction of 
Geneva is a more or less open question; what he 
clearly did hold was, the legitimacy of divers contra- 
dictory opinions, the large range of the unessential. The 
comprehensiveness which was a political necessity in 
the eyes of Elizabeth and her secular counsellors had 
been but a just latitude in the eyes of Cranmer ; yet 
there were few other Churchmen who would not have 
curtailed it if they could. However much this or that 
adviser or coadjutor dominated him on individual 
points, the whole outcome was and is to this day the 
expression of Cranmer's mind ; far more than that of 
any other individual, school, or party in the Church. 
There were old doctrines which he would not exclude 
though he himself had shaken them off; there were 
new doctrines which he would not exclude though he 
was not himself persuaded of their truth. Such a man 
will never have the praise of partisans ; but if he had 
not pointed the way, it is not easy to doubt that the 
Church would officially either have reverted to Rome 
or have become frankly Calvinist. As it was, it 
became deliberately comprehensive, 



i8o CRANMER 

It is, indeed, obvious that there were numbers of the 
clergy who had no liking for this official form of 
Reformation ; which might be summed up as reject- 
ing papal authority, asserting secular supremacy, and, 
in questions of dogma and. ritual, demanding only on 
one side the decisive negation of certain specified 
Roman doctrines and practices, and on the other the 
positive affirmation of very little more than is con- 
tained in the Apostles' Creed. As to papal authority, 
no doubt there was small room for question. As to 
secular supremacy, it could always be maintained that 
the clergy had never admitted the principle but only 
submitted to the material fact, and reserved the 
right to challenge any and every application of the 
State's claim to control. As to dogmas and ritual, there 
was plenty of opportunity for very one-sided interpre- 
tations. It was clear enough that any party becoming 
dominant would be able to pose for the time as the only 
truly representative group. To arrive at anything like 
an accurate apportionment of the distribution of the 
clergy among the varying schools under the Elizabethan 
settlement is not possible. That a few were resolute 
adherents of the old order is undeniable ; and that a 
few were equally resolute adherents of the most 
advanced reformed type. But it can hardly be 
doubted that the bulk — at least until the pope chose to 
challenge the legitimacy of Elizabeth's government — 
had no very strong convictions beyond what was ground 
of common agreement ; except a preference for whatever 
magnified their office on the one hand, and a repudiation 
of the rule of celibacy on the other. For the rest, they 
leaned to this side or that, according as their mental 
bias was conservative or advanced, until the ultra- 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 181 

reformers were gradually drawn off by the rise of 
definite dissenting sects. 

Perhaps the most curious feature of the method by 
which comprehensiveness was attained was ingenious 
ambiguity. The formularies do not commonly assert 
that either of two doctrines may be legitimately held, 
but they propound a doctrine in terms which may be 
translated in either of two or more ways. A theory 
has been invented that the true test of the interpre- 
tation is the supposed belief of the framer. Yet there 
can hardly be a question that the formularies were 
authorised precisely on account of their ambiguity. 
And here again we recognise the Cranmerian note. 
To take a specific instance — though the wording is not 
Cranmer's — everyone is agreed that the archbishop 
held that "the Body and Blood of Christ are verily 
and indeed taken and received by the faithful at the 
Lord's Supper " — but the critics are entirely disagreed 
as to the raode of the Presence as he recognised it. At 
one end of the scale is a crudely thaumaturgic inter- 
pretation ; at the other, a frankly rationalistic one : 
neither being acceptable, the alternative is some 
mystical one, which to a few minds conveys a definite 
meaning, but to most is a satisfying method of con- 
cealing from themselves that they themselves do not 
know what they mean. Cranmer, on this and on 
many other points, adopting himself a mystical inter- 
pretation, recognised that this could not be necessary 
since it could not be really grasped by the average 
intelligence ; and preferred ambiguity to expressions 
involving the acceptance of either universally in- 
telligible extreme. 

In the rejection of the papal authority, the moving 



1 82 CRANMER 

force was Henry viii., backed by the approval of the 
great bulk of his subjects, whether lay or cleric. In 
the assertion of the secular supremacy, the moving 
force was Thomas Cromwell, backed by the king, the 
bulk of the laity, and a few of the clergy headed by 
Cranmer. In the comprehensive character of the 
dogma and ritual of the reformed Church, Cranmer 
was the moving spirit ; and his work, overthrown 
for a brief interval, was confirmed by the political 
necessities of Elizabeth's government. The circum- 
stances of her birth made reconciliation with Rome 
a practical impossibility ; while for many years the 
country could not venture to espouse the cause of 
militant Protestantism. Elizabeth herself needed to 
retain the loyalty to her own person both of the old 
Catholics and of the democratic Puritans. Each could 
find, not indeed complete satisfaction, but a reasonably 
acceptable compromise within the four corners of the 
Cranmerian formularies. The uniformity resulting 
was sufficient to meet the public convenience ; its 
boundaries were marked enough to show that even 
comprehensiveness drew a line somewhere ; while there 
was prima facie ground for holding suspect anyone 
who stood stubbornly outside. Political requirements 
coinciding with the martyred archbishop's religious 
theory, the reformed Church was established on a 
working basis. 

What change it was that actually befell the Church 
at the Reformation is the subject of a wonderful 
amount of misrepresentation. Half a century ago, 
it was possible for a responsible historian to write as 
if one Church was abolished and another established 
in its place. To-day it is perhaps more common to 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 183 

find it suggested that the Anglican Church has been 
one and unchanged from the earliest times ; that the 
Reformation was merely her repudiation of foreign 
doctrines which Rome had endeavoured to thrust 
upon her. 

The fact is that the pre-Reformation Church was 
an institution absolutely unique in history. There 
are no analogies ; there is nothing similar to argue 
from. The theory of the relation between the 
ecclesiastical organisation and the State was never 
worked out. The conditions under which that organ- 
isation held and administered property were never 
examined. Her relation to other religious bodies was 
never in question, because no separate religious bodies 
were allowed to exist. 

The official political theory underlying the Reforma- 
tion was, that the Church was essentially national ; 
that in any country professing Christianity and ruled 
by a Christian prince, the Church was the nation itself 
in its spiritual aspect, as the State is the nation in its 
secular aspect. The clergy were the duly appointed 
ministers of the Church, as civil functionaries are the 
duly appointed ministers of the State. To them, in 
the natural course, belonged the administration of 
lands and revenues consecrated to religion ; but these 
were the actual property of the whole of the nation 
qua Church, not of the clergy. Now, inasmuch as 
there cannot exist in one nation two co-ordinate 
dominions, but one must ultimately have authority 
over the other, either the State must have ultimate 
control of the Church, or the Church of the State : a 
dilemma in practice admitting of only one answer. It 
follows then that the clergy can claim to direct and 



1 84 CRANMER 

administer the Church only so far as the State thinks 
right to permit. It follows also that changes in the 
religious judgments of the nation, or in the conditions 
of admission to the ministry of the Church, do not 
affect the continuity either of the Church or of the 
ministerial body. It follows also that the State 
can either recognise or reject the necessity of a 
particular ceremony — such as the laying on of hands — 
in the appointment of ministers. By insistence on the 
practice, the "apostolic succession" has in fact been 
maintained ; yet — according to the hypothesis — the 
continuity of the ministry would not have been inter- 
fered with by its rejection. 

Now this theory of the Unity of the Church and 
the nation — teres atque rotundus from an academic 
point of view — could never have appealed to practical 
sentiment. " The Church " meant, and to this day 
means in common parlance, the clergy. The man who 
handed over broad acres to the Church had in his 
mind no idea of endowing the nation. Apart from 
gifts which were in reality merely ingenious evasions 
of feudal imposts, he intended, as a rule, to conciliate 
the powers who could modify his purgatorial experi- 
ences ; or else he desired his wealth to be specifically 
devoted to education or to charity. Systematic 
education and systematic charity were entirely in the 
hands of the clerical organisation. It may be assumed 
that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the pious 
donor would in fact have been shocked beyond words 
at the idea of any but the clergy having control of his 
donations, and that he intended them primarly to be 
the beneficiaries. It is reasonable, however, to argue 
that those who were particularly interested in an 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 185 

educational or charitable disposition of their property 
had only made the clergy trustees of the same because 
they formed the only existing organisation for the 
administration of such trusts ; and also that a firm 
belief in the efficacy of purchase-money as a passport 
through purgatory, together with sundry other pious 
opinions which the reformed Church declared to 
be erroneous or superstitious, had been important 
factors in directing donations. From all of these 
arguments, setting aside the academic theory of 
Church and State, the conclusions might be derived : 
that much of the wealth in the hands of the clergy had 
been procured by means of obsolete claims to influence 
over the peace or otherwise of the departed ; much also 
out of a piety which would have accounted many of the 
reformed doctrines as heretical, not to say blasphemous ; 
much because, at the time of the donations, no other 
organisation existed for carrying out the intentions 
of the donor. From which again would be deduced 
the right of the State to intervene, and control or 
supplant the ecclesiastical administration of property 
so acquired. 

Again, however, the point must be insisted on, that 
while the State could lay down the law and demand 
the official acquiescence of the clergy thereto, yet it 
was always open to the latter to declare that their 
rights were sacred and indefeasible; that their abdication 
even if it had been voluntary was ultra vires — just 
as, by way of illustration, parents cannot sign away 
the right to keep their children — and that as a matter 
of fact it was not voluntary but compulsory. No 
precedents, no admissions, and no submissions can 
apply in dealing with the proposition that the clerical 



1 86 CRANMER 

hierarchy is of divine appointment, subordinate to the 
secular authority only in virtue of the right asserted 
by might ; and that to lay secular hands on what has 
been confided to the care of that hierarchy is sacrilege, 
albeit the State might exhibit grounds both theoretical 
and practical for its intervention. 

The Reformation in its popular aspect requires 
separate consideration. 

The mind of the ordinary Englishman is not 
interested in abstract propositions; and he contem- 
plates reforms with an eye strictly directed to their 
practical results. He has an affection for the things 
to which he is accustomed, and looks with suspicion 
upon innovations. His attitude towards the Reforma- 
tion in its earlier stages seems to have been entirely in 
accord with his usual character. 

The movement, regarded as anti-papal, was sure of 
popular support, on the general ground that the pope 
is a foreigner. Regarded as anti-clerical, it was 
received with a divided mind. Fanatics, of course, 
railed at the vices of the clergy in unmeasured terms ; 
but a popular gathering was quite as likely to duck 
the fanatic in a horse-pond as to applaud him. The 
wealth of the monastic orders might excite envy ; but 
as landlords they were generally preferred to the 
nobles. Clerical immunities under the law were offen- 
sive not as a rale to the populace so much as to jurists, 
since the clergy were always disposed to strain to the 
utmost the inclusiveness of their protective jurisdiction ; 
and, in respect of many offences, popular sympathy 
— with the Draconian punishments in vogue, as de- 
scribed in the introduction to Utopia — was habitually 
on the side of the law-breakers. Roughly speaking, 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 187 

the unpopularity of the regular clergy varied very 
much with the character of the foundations in a par- 
ticular locality ; the attack on them was rarely received 
with local enthusiasm ; and in both North and West 
the risings showed clearly that the official movement 
had entirely outrun the popular sentiment. 

Theologically, as we have seen, even the official 
attitude had scarcely undergone modification when 
Edward came to the throne; and it is obvious that 
the active reformation during his reign was by no 
means to the popular taste. Dialectically, its most 
vigorous promoters were foreigners, such as Peter 
Martyr; practically, it was enforced by an oligarchy 
which showed little intelligence and less character, 
whether under the leadership of Somerset or of 
Warwick. In the large towns and in the eastern 
counties, always in later years the strongholds of 
Puritanism, the new doctrines were popular, and on 
their destructive side were no doubt highly attractive 
to the 'prentice element ; but in the North and West 
the ancient ways continued to find favour. 

To all appearance, then, on Mary's accession the 
populace in general was quite prepared to return 
to the old ways, and particularly to be rid of the 
foreigners who had been busily engaged in admin- 
istering well-meant but irritating advice and rebuke. 
There was a prompt exodus of these persons ; and it 
seemed at the first start of the new reign that, though 
of course the return to power of the Conservative 
party would involve the changing of a good many 
seats, clemency was to be the order of the day. But 
then the face of things changed. The Germans and 
Switzers had flown ; but Spaniards and Italians took 



1 88 CRANMER 

their place. The Spanish marriage, despite all safe- 
guards, was ominously suggestive of a foreign domina- 
tion ; the royal attitude towards the papal supremacy 
was opposed to popular feeling. The English Bible 
had been by this time widely enough circulated to 
create a formidable body of religious opinion derived 
from the direct study of the Scriptures. The fires of 
persecution were kindled : the highest Church digni- 
taries were struck down ; martyrs conspicuous for high 
character, white-haired elders, raw lads and tender 
women, went rejoicing to the stake. Fear, horror, 
righteous rage, sprang up in the hearts of a people 
ready enough to be indifferent to the subject-matter 
of religious controversy ; and a hot hatred of all that 
could be branded as " popery " took a deep and abiding 
root. The Marian persecution made the country at 
large passionately Protestant ; and the seal was set on 
the Protestant Reformation of the people by the policy 
of the popes and of Spain ; forcing the entire country 
to take sides with the Protestant peoples and parties 
on the Continent, even when abstaining from actual 
hostilities. 

In this sense of the word, the Elizabethan clergy 
were no less emphatic than the laity in claiming the 
name of Protestant ; to which, however, a quite different 
sense has been given in latter-day controversy. But 
while the elergy, and more particularly the higher 
clergy, constantly tended more and more definitely to 
the Catholic party which had diverged least from 
Rome — the Crown conceiving that its own dignity 
and that of the prelacy were intimately bound up 
together — the tendency of the Reformation among the 
laity was more and more to Protestantism of the pro- 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 189 

nounced Puritan type. The study of the Bible in- 
creased, and men, deriving their religious ideas from 
it directly, found therein no prima facie sanction for 
elaborate ritual, or for regarding the priest as a neces- 
sary intermediary between the man and his Maker. 
However much attached the people might be to tradi- 
tional observances and customs, however much opposed 
to ranters, however loyal to Church as against Dissent, 
a change took place at the Reformation which may 
significantly be expressed in a phrase — the Priest to 
his flock had become the Parson. 

Had matters rested here, it may be that no distinc- 
tion would ever have needed to be drawn between the 
Anglican and the National Reformation; the Eliza- 
bethan settlement would have covered the field. But 
the forces at work were not to be so easily laid to 
rest. A new phase of the Reformation was in course 
of evolution, a phase associated with other names ; 
which developed into the struggles of sectaries under 
the Stuarts, and the division of Protestants into Church- 
men and Dissenters. The reconciliation of Catholicism 
and Puritanism could never be more than partial. The 
peculiar achievement of Cranmer lay in his framing a 
modus vivendi so effectively inclusive in its scope that 
Laud could rule the same Church whose children in 
later generations were brought up on the Pilgrim's 
Progress; that Church which a few years since included 
among her sons Lord Shaftsbury, Doctor Pusey, and 
Dean Stanley. 

•^ urv^c <U "^*t ft feAtiv^ 6*T 



INDEX 



Absolution, 8. 

Abuses, 8. 

Abused images, 120, 122. 

Acts of Parliament passed — 

Annates, restraint of (a), 57, 64. 
(18), 66. 
,, to Crown, 57, 68. 
Appeals, restraint of, 55, 57, 64. 
Appeals and Submission, 66. 
Articles, Six, 84, 91, 98, 121, 

129 147. 
Benefit of Clergy, 63. 
Chantries, 78, 121. 
Conge" d'dire, 66. 
Heresy laws revived, 150. 
Marriage of Clergy, 125. 
Mortmain, 64. 
Mortuaries, 58. 
Peter Pence, 66. 
Pluralities, 58. 
Probate, 58. 
Repeal of Edward's laws, 145. 

,, Henry's laws, 150. 
Revival of heresy laws, 150. 
Royal Proclamations, 79, 119. 
Six Articles, 84, 91, 98, 121, 129, 

147. 
Submission of Clergy, 66. 
Succession (a), 66, 67. 

(|8), 68. 
Suppression of Monasteries (a), 

76. 
Suppression of Monasteries (j3), 

77. 
Supremacy, 68. 
Treasons, 68, 70, 121. 



Acts of Parliament — continued. 
Uniformity (a), 125. 
(j8), 137. 
Adrian vi., 30. 
Alasco, 132. 
Alexander VI., 3, 49. 
Altar, sacrament of. See Eucharist. 
Altar war, 132. 
Ambiguity, 181. 
America, 17. 
Anabaptists, 29, 85. 
Anarchism, 19, 84. 
Annates, 57. 

, , Acts. See Acts of Parlia- 
ment. 
Anne Boleyn. See Boleyn. 
Anne of Cleves, 79, 98. 
Antinomians, 85, 117. 
Apostolic succession, 93, 139. 
Appeals, restraint of. Sec Acts. 
,, to General Councils. Sec 
Councils. 
Aquinas, Thomas, 14. 
Arthur, Prince, 36. 
Articles, Six, 84, 91, 98, 121, 129, 147. 
,, Ten, 89. 

„ Thirty-Nine, 137, 140. 
,, Forty-Two, 137, 140. 
Aske, Robert, 77. 
Augsburg, Confession, 33. 
Diet ('30), 32. 
,, ('48), 100, 108. 
„ ('55), 110. 
Interim of, 100, 108. 
Peace of, 110. 
Augustine, Saint, 25. 
191 



192 



INDEX 



Baptism, 89, 93. 

Barlow, 90, 93. 

Becket, 11, 177. 

Beggers, Supplicacyon for the, 4, 5. 

Benefit of clergy, 63, 71. 

Bible. See Translations. 

Bishops' Book, 90. 

Bishoprics, new, 77. 

Black Book, 75, 76. 

Black Rubric, 138. 

Boleyn, Anne, 30, 38, 45, 55, 69. 

Bologna, 108. 

Bonner, 87, 113, 121, 135, 144, 

149, 152, 154, 169. 
Borgias, 3, 48. 
Bradford, 152. 167. 
Breviary, 124. 
Brigittines, 68. 
Bucer, 131, 136, 138. 
Burke and More, 85. 

Calvin, John, 24, 33, 106, 107, 

108. 
Calvinism, 100, 107, 115, 126. 
Cambridge, 20, 42, 131. 
Campeggio, 40. 
Canon Law, 60-62, 91, 136. 
Caraifa, 110. 
Cardinal College, 22, 73. 
Carlstadt, 29. 
Carthusians, 68, 73. 
Catherine of Aragon, 30, 36, 55. 

See Divorce. 
Catherine Howard, 79. 
Catherine Parr, 112. 
Catholics, 188. 
Catholicity, 163. 
Cecil, 127. 

Celibacy, 91, 92, 117, 147. 
Ceremonies, 89, 118, 135, 139. 
Chantries, 78, 121. 
Chapters, 78. 
Charles v. — 

becomes Emperor, 26. 

political attitude, 28. 

Worms, 26, 28. 

marriage, 30. 

sack of Rome, 32. 

reconciliation with Rome, 32. 

compromise with League, 33. 



Charles v. — continued. 

the central figure, 99. 

attitude on Councils, 101. 

attacks the League, 100. 

attacked by Maurice, 109. 

abdication, 110. 

miscellaneous, 152. 
Charterhouse. See Carthusians. 
Christian Man, Erudition of a. 

See King's Book. 
Christian Man, Institution of a. 

See Bishops' Book. 
Church. See Clergy, Ecclesiastical, 

etc. 
Clement vn. — 

accession, 30. 

anti-Imperial, 31. 

sack of Rome, 32. 

reconciliation with Charles, 32. 

on the divorce, 40. 

Divorce Commission, 40. 

revokes trial to Rome, 40. 

condemns divorce, 57. 

objection to Council, 101. 

miscellaneous, 100. 
Clergy- 
charges against, 4 ff. 

Colet's charges, 21. 

on the Continent, 7. 

in England, 7-11. 

worldliness, 10, 21. 

independence of Rome, 4, 10, 54. 

taxation, 11. 

endowments, 52. 

anti-papal attitude, 52, 54. 

under praemunire, 59. 

submission of, 62, 66. 

seculars and regulars, 74. 

marriage of, 91, 125. 

under Elizabeth, 180. 

See Convocation and Ecclesias- 
tical. 
Cleves, Anne of, 79, 98. 
Colet, John — 

early days, 12. 

in Italy, 12, 13. 

lectures, 13. 

Dean of St. Paul's, 15. 

address to Convocation, 21. 

charges against clergy, 21. 



INDEX 



193 



Colet, John — continued. 
attacked for heresy, 21. 
St. Paul's school, 22. 
death, 22. 

miscellaneous, 6, 19, 85. 
Cologne, Archbishop of, 124. 
Columbus, 17. 

Commissions. See Canon Law, 
Communion, Prayer - Book, 
Visitations, Windsor. 
Communion, order of, 122, 123. 
Communism, 85. 
Comperta, 76. 

Comprehension, 141, 142, 179, 182. 
Conference of Ratisbon, 102, 103. 
Cong6 d'e'lire, 66. 

Conscience, freedom of, 80, 82, 176. 
Constantinople, fall of, 2. 
Consubstantiation, 115, 134. 
Contarini, 102, 103, 116. 
Continuity, 142, 183. 
Convocation — 

Colet and Convocation, 20 ff. 
on divorce, 56. 
on General Councils, 56. 
subsidies, 59. 
supremacy clause, 59. 
answers to supplication, 61, 62. 
compulsory submission, 62. 
petitions for translation, 87. 
, , against heretical books, 

87. 
,, for revision, 88. 
, , for communion in both 

kinds, 121. 
,, for marriage, 121. 
,, for representation, 122. 
,, for Commission on 
Ecclesiastical Laws, 
122. 
authorises King's Book, 93. 
rejects Homilies, 119. 
not consulted, 125, 138, 140. 
reaction in, 145. 
Council of Regency, 111. 
Council of Trent. See Trent. 
Councils, General, appeals to, by — 
Cranmer, 56, 101 169. 
Henry viii., 56, 101. 
Luther, 25, 101. 

J 3 



Councils, General, attitude towards, 
of— 

Charles v., 32, 101. 

Clement vn., 101. 

Convocation, 56. 

Julius in., 109. 

Luther, 27, 101, 102. 

Paul in., 101, 102. 

Protestants, 101, 102. 
Counter-Reformation, 108. 
Courage, 172. 
Covenanters, 155. 
Coverdale, 87, 145. 
Cranmer's Career — 

early years, 20, 42. 

appeal to universities, 44. 

brought to court, 45. 

sent to Italy, 46, 55. 

sent to Germany, 46, 55, 58. 

marriage, 42, 91. 

selected for primacy, 46. 

installation, 46, 55. 

oaths of obedience, 55. 

pronounces divorce, 56. 

appeals to General Council, 56. 

pleads for More, 68. 

surrenders Anne, 69, 164. 

surrenders Cromwell, 70, 164. 

presses for Bible, 87. 

English Litany, 88. 

shares in Ten Articles, 89. 

shares in Bishop's Book, 90. 

shares in King's Book, 92. 

opposes Six Articles, 92. 

coronation sermon, 113, 118. 

introduces Homilies, 118, 119. 

shares in First Prayer-Book, 124. 

debates on Act of Uni formity, 131. 

book on the Sacrament, 133. 

shares in Reformatio, 137. 

resists Nonconformists, 138. 

Edward's will, 144, 165. 

repudiates the Mass, 145, 166, 
169. 

sent to the Tower, 145, 166. 

removed to Oxford, 167. 

disputation there, 167. 

summoned to Rome, 167. 

trial at Oxford, 167, 168. 

condemnation by pope, 168. 



194 



INDEX 



Cranmer's Career — continued. 
asks to confer, 169. 
first submission, 169. 
second submission, 169. 
appeal to General Council, 169, 

170. 
third submission, 170. 
fourth submission, 170. 
removed to Christ Church, 170. 
first recantation, 170. 
second recantation, 171. 
in St. Mary's Church, 172. 
at the stake, 174. 
miscellaneous, 11, 98, 111, 114, 

116, 130, 135, 152. 
Cranmer's Character — 
dominated by Henry, 69, 70, 164. 
amiability, 69. 
innocence, 45, 68. 
lack of self-confidence, 63, 69, 164, 

165. 
consistency, 81. 
learning, 124, 133. 
breadth of view, 161. 
timidity, 42. 
need of affection, 169. 
moral traits, 43, 45, 46, 51, 69, 

96. 
mental traits, 43, 45, 124, 178. 
courage and weakness, 81, 92, 

145, 158, 160, 162, 166, 171. 
vacillation, 81, 132. 
condemnatory views, 159. 
Cranmer's Policy and Views — 
the divorce, 44. 
supremacy, 44, 65, 80, 81, 93, 

160. 
obedience, 65, 81, 93, 94, 167. 
the open Bible, 87. 
English Liturgy, 88. 
apostolic succession, 93, 139. 
secular control, 65, 80, 93, 161. 
conformity, 82. 
images, 118. 
sacraments, 131, 134. 
dogmatic comprehension, 142, 

179, 181. 
attitude to Rome, 44, 55. 
,, to the Crown, 177. 

to Lutherans, 126, 131. 



Cranmer's attitude to Calvinists, 
131, 179. 

attitude to heresy, 160. 

review of his policy, 141, 142, 179. 

results of his policy, 182. 

condemnatory views, 65, 161. 
Cromwell, Thomas — 

early years, 48. 

Italian influences, 48, 49. 

in Wolsey's service, 50. 

loyalty, 50, 51. 

corruption, 50. 

in Henry's service, 51. 

policy, 54, 74. 

character, 47, 50. 

vicar-general, 70. 

visitation of monasteries, 75, 77. 

Bible, 87, 89. 

German policy, 79, 98. 

fall, 70, 79. 

miscellaneous, 11, 58, 59, 95, 98. 

Day, 135, 140. 
Deprivation of bishops, 146. 

,, of clergy, 147. 

Diets. See Augsburg, Ratisbon, 

Spires, "Worms. 
Dissent, 118, 181, 189. 
Divorce, the — 

marriages, 36. 

dispensation, 36. 

arguments for, 36, 37. 
,, against, 37. 

Henry's perturbation, 38. 

public attitude, 39. 

papal commission, 40. 

failure of proceedings, 40. 

universities, 44, 54. 

Cranmer, 44. 

Convocation, 56. 

divorce pronounced, 56. 

condemned by pope, 57. 
Douay, 175. 
Dudley. See Warwick. 
Duns, 14. 

Eastern counties, 107, 128, 187. 
Ecclesiastical courts, 21, 60. 

,, endowments, 76, 77, 

78. 



INDEX 



195 



Ecclesiastical independence, 4, 10. 
,, nationalism, 4, 183. 

,, polity, theories of, 11, 

81, 176, 183-186. 
See Clergy and Convocation. 
Economic conditions, 18, 128. 
Education, 22, 121. 
Edward vi. — 

accession, 111. 

government under, 127, 140. 

will, 143. 

death, 109, 144. 
Elector of Saxony, 26. 
Elizabeth, 111, 127, 141, 175, 182. 
Endowments, 76-78. 
English Bible, 86-88, 141. 

services, 88, 120, 123-125, 141. 

traits, 4, 186. 
Erasmus — 

at Oxford, 15. 

in London, 16. 

at Cambridge, 20, 42. 

his Praise of Folly, 17. 

his New Testament, 15, 19, 42, 
85. 

his Paraphrase, 118, 119, 120. 

contrasted with Luther, 23. 

advice to Frederic, 26. 

miscellaneous, 11, 19, 29, 35. 
Erudition of a Christian Man. See 

King's Book. 
Eucharist, theories of, 114 ff., 134. 
Exeter, 129. 
Exempt monasteries, 72. 

Faith, justification by, 102, 116. 

Ferdinand of Austria, 31. 

Ferdinand of Spain, 36. 

Ferrar, 152. 

Fifteenth century, 2. 

Fish, Simon, 4, 6. 

Fisher, 6, 20, 22, 40, 46, 54, 67, 

68, 160, 178. 
Fitzjames, 20, 21. 
Florence, 3, 12. 
Foreigners, 126, 131, 145, 187. 
Formularies. See s.v. 
Forty-Two Articles, 137, 140. 
Foxe, 43, 90. 
Francis 1., 28, 30, 99, 102, 103, 107. 



Frederic of Saxony, 26, 28, 31. 
Freedom of conscience, 80, 82, 176. 
Frith, 85. 
Frundsberg, 32. 
Froude, J. A., 47. 

Gakcia, 169, 171. 
Gardiner — 

at Rome, 40, 44. 

answers the supplication, 61. 

Bible, 87. 

excluded from council, 111. 

in opposition, 113. 

challenges Cranmer, 120. 

in prison, 121, 135. 

on the sacrament, 133, 134. 

Chancellor, 146. 

Spanish marriage, 146. 

reactionary, 148. 

the persecution, 150, 152. 

miscellaneous, 22, 46, 57, 90 
123. 
Geneva, 24, 100, 108. 
Grace, pilgrimage of, 77, 90. 
Greek, 14. 

Grey, Lady Jane, 143, 146. 
Grocyn, 12. 

Hales, 144, 165. 
Heath, 135, 140. 
Henri 11., 99. 
Henry 11., 11, 177. 
Henry v., 2. 
Henry vn., 16, 35. 
Henry vill. — 

accession, 16. 

character, 16, 35, 95. 

traits, 28, 45, 51. 

scruples, 31, 38. 

anti-papal policy, 31. 

orthodoxy, 37, 82. 

ruthlessness, 68. 

affection for Cranmer, 91, 95, 166. 

aim of his reformation, 53, 64, 
80, 94. 

will, 111, 143. 

obsequies, 113. 

miscellaneous, 11, 28, 123, 126. 
Heresy laws revived, 150. 
Heretical books, 58, 87. 



196 



INDEX 



Heretics, attacks on, 21, 53, 84. 
Hertford. See Somerset. 
Homilies, Book of, 118, 119, 120. 
Hooper, 133, 136, 138, 140, 145, 

152, 157, 167. 
Huguenots, 24, 107. 
Huss, 25. 
Hythloday, 19. 

Iconoclasm, 83, 118, 120, 141. 

Idolatry, 10, 118. 

Ignatius. See Loyola. 

Images, 9, 83, 117, 120, 122. ■ 

Independence. See Ecclesiastical. 

Indulgences, 24. 

Informers, 70. 

Injunctions, 120. 

Inquisition, 106. 

Institutes of Calvin, 106. 

Institution of a Christian Man. 

See Bishops' Book. 
Insurrections. See Risings. 
Intention, 139. 

Interim of Augsburg, 100, 108. 
Irreverence, 131, 135. 
Italy, 2, 14, 48. 

Jesuits, order of, 100, 104, 108, 155. 

founded, 105. 

organisation, 106. 

ethics, 106. 

education, 106. 

influence, 106. 
Joan of Arc, 2. 
Julius 11., 36, 49. 
Julius in., 109, 110. 
Justification by faith, 102, 116. 

Ket, 128, 129. 
King's Book, 92, 125. 
Kneeling at Communion, 138. 
Knox, John, 133, 136, 138, 140, 
142. 

Laity and Reformation, 41, 130, 

144, 186. 
Langton, Stephen, 5. 
Laski. See Alasco. 
Latimer, 22, 75, 85, 90, 130, 132, 

152, 157, 158, 167, 168. 



Latitude. See Comprehension. 
Layton, 75, 76, 79. 
Legates, papal, 11, 58, 148, 149. 
Leigh, 75, 76, 79. 
Leox., 22, 24, 29, 30, 49. 
Liberty of conscience, 80, 82, 176. 
Licences to bishops, 166. 
Licensed preachers, 79, 122. 
Linacre, 12. 
Lincolnshire rising, 76. 
Lisle, Lord. See Warwick. 
Litany, 88, 120. 

Liturgy, 88, 124, 174. See Prayer- 
Book. 
Lollardry, 1, 20, 128, 155. 
Londoners, 154. 
Louis xi., 2. 

Loyola, Ignatius, 104-106. 
Luther — 

his personality, 23. 

challenges Tetzel, 25. 

appeals to General Council, 25. 

appeals to nationalism, 26. 

burns the pope's Bull, 26. 

at "Worms, 27. 

after Worms, 27, 29. 

opposes Peasants' War, 29, 84. 

attitude to General Council, 27, 
101. 

attitude to Ratisbon Conference, 
103. 

death, 33, 97, 100. 

miscellaneous, 35, 49, 107, 124. 
Lutheran doctrines, 115, 116, 134. 
Lutheran League. See Schmalkald. 

Macchiavelli, 18, 48. 
Marriage of clergy, 91, 125. 
Martyr, Peter, 131, 136, 138. 
Martyrdoms- 
Bradford, 152. 

Cranmer, 152. 

Ferrar, 152. 

Frith, 85. 

Hooper, 152, 167. 

Latimer. 152. 

Ridley, 152, 

Rogers, 151, 157, 167. 

Saunders, 152. 

Taylor, 152, 158, 167. 



INDEX 



197 



Mary — 

accession, 144. 

moderation, 144. 

coronation, 145. 

Spanish negotiations, 146. 

Wyatt's rebellion, 146. 

severity, 146, 147. 

marriage, 110. 

religious policy, 148, 149, 153. 

character, 151. 

death, 174. 

miscellaneous, 30, 36, 38, 111. 
Mass, 114, 144, 145, 156. 
Maurice of Saxony, 99, 100, 109. 
Melanchthon, 33, 103, 160. 
Monasteries, 6. 

attacks on, 73. 

visitations, 75, 77. 

evidence against, 75. 

suppressions, 22, 73, 76, 77. 
Monasticism, 9, 71-73. 
Montmartre, 105, 106. 
More, Sir Thomas — 

at Oxford, 12, 14. 

under Henry vii. 16. 

Wolsey, 51. 

the Utopia, 17 ff., 186. 

as reactionary, 19, 29, 84. 

Chancellor, 19, 51, 84. 

resignation, 63. 

on supremacy, 67, 68. 

imprisonment, 68. 

death, 68. 

miscellaneous, 15, 37, 46, 54, 85, 
160. 
Moz'tmain. See Statutes and Acts. 
Morton, Cardinal, 73. 
Mortuaries Act, 58. 
Muhlberg, 100. 
Miinzer, 29. 

New Learning, 3, 12-14, 26. 
Nonconformists, 138, 140. 
Nonconformity, 136. 
Northumberland. See Warwick. 

Observants, 68, 73. 
Opportunism, 127. 
Orders, 93. 
Ordinal, 139. 



Ordinaries, supplication against the, 

60. 
Osiander, 91. 
Oxford, 13-15, 131, 141. 

Paget, 112. 

Pallium, 7. 

Panic, 158. 

Papal jurisdiction in England, 10. 

Paraphrase of Erasmus, 118, 119, 
120. 

Parliament — 

Acts of. See Acts. 
Marian, 147. 
Reformation, 58 ff. 

Parr, Catherine, 112. 

Passau, peace of, 109. 

Paul in., 100, 101, 102, 103, 109. 

Paul iv., 110, 167, 168. 

Pavia, 30, 38. 

Peasants' War (German), 19, 29, 
84, 128. 

Penance, 89, 93, 117. 

Persecution under — 
Henry, 85. 

Mary, 151 ff., 154, 157. 
miscellaneous, 155. 

Peter Martyr, 131, 136, 138. 

Peter Pence, 66. 

Philip 11., 110, 149, 152. 

Pilgrimage of Grace, 77, 90. 

Pius iv., 110. 

Plato, 14, 17. 

Pluralities, 21, 58. 

Pole, 102, 116, 149, 152, 153, 169, 
174. 

Polity, ecclesiastical. See Ecclesi- 
astical. 

Popery, 156, 176. 

Popes. See sub nomine. 

Praemunire, 6, 11, 58, 121. 

Praise of Folly, 17. 

Prayer-Book, First, 123, 124, 125, 
138. 

Prayer-Book, Second, 137, 138. 

Preachers, licensed, 79, 122. 
,, suspension of, 123. 

Presence, Real, 89, 115, 133. 

Priestcraft, 176. 

Priesthood, 8. 



198 



INDEX 



Prince, the, 18, 48. 
Printing, 2. 
Probate Act, 58. 
Proclamations Act, 79. 
Protector. See Somerset. 
Protest of Spires, 32, 97. 
Protestant League. See Schmal- 

kald. 
Protestantism, 32, 33, 103. 
Provisors, Statute of, 11. 
Pulpits, tuning the, 79. 
Purgatory, 8, 89, 117. 
Puritans, 24. 
Puritanism, 33, 107. 

Quignon's breviary, 124. 

Rationale, the, 94. 
Eatisbon, 102, 103. 
Reaction against reform, 144 ff. , 
187. 
,, against persecution, 156, 
188. 
Real Presence. See Presence. 
Rebellions. See Risings. 
Recantations, 170. 
Reconciliation with Rome, 110, 

150. 
"Reformatio Legum," 137. 
Reformation, character of — 

general, 23. 

counter-, 108. 

Edward's, 141. 

Elizabeth's, 182. 

Henry's, 64, 65, 83. 

Luther's, 24. 

Swiss, 107. 
Reformation, influence on, of — 

Calvin, 24, 107, 126. 

Cranmer, 142, 163, 179. 

Elizabeth, 182. 

Henry, 52, 53, 80. 

Hooper, 138. 

Jesuits, 106. 

Knox, 138. 

Luther, 23, 24, 126. 

Mary, 151, 188. 

Ridley, 142. 

Spain, 152, 156, 188. 

Zwingli, 24. 



Regency, Council of, 111. 
Relics, 9, 71, 83. 
Restraint of Appeals. See Acts. 
Rich, 112. 

Ridley, 116, 131, 133, 134, 135, 142, 
145, 152, 157, 165, 167, 168. 
Risings — 

Cornish, 122. 

Ket's, 128, 129, 130. 

Lincolnshire, 76. 

Northumberland's, 144. 

Peasants' (German), 19, 29, 84, 
128. 

Pilgrimage of Grace, 77, 90. 

Western, 128, 129, 130. 

Wyatt's, 146. 
Rogers, 151, 152, 157, 167. 
Rome, sack of, 32. 
Rubric, Black, 138. 

Saceamentarian, 131. 
Sacraments, what are, 89, 93. See 

Eucharist, etc. 
Saints, invocation of, 89. 
St. Paul's school, 22. 
Sarum, Use of, 124. 
Saunders, 152. 
Savonarola, 3, 12, 13. 
Saxony, Dukes of, 99. 

,, Electors of, 26, 99. 
Schmalkaldic League — 

formation, 33. 

growth, 99. 

relations with England, 79, 91, 
98. 

war with Emperor, 100. 

Miihlberg, 100. 
Scholasticism, 2, 10, 13. 
Schools, 121, 141. 
Secular control. See Ecclesiastical 

polity. 
Seymour, Jane, 69, 111. 

ofSudeley, 112, 130. 
Shaxton, 90. 

Six Articles. See Articles. 
Somerset, 112, 130, 140. 
Soto, 169. 
Sovereignty, 81. 
Spain, 110, 152, 156, 188. 
Spanish alliance, 35, 37. 



INDEX 



199 



Spanish marriage, 110, 145, 148. 
Spires, Diets of (a) 31 ; (/3) 32. 

,, protest of, 32, 97. 
Statutes — 
Mortmain, 11, 64. 
Praemunire, 11. 
Pro visors, 11. 
Stokesley, 63, 87, 90. 
Submission of Clergy, 62, 66. 
Submissions of Cranmer, 169, 170. 
Succession, questions of, 38, 67, 111, 

142. 
Succession, Act of (a), 66, 67. 
„ (j8), 68. 
,, apostolic, 93, 139. 

Superstitious practices, 83, 122. 
Supplicacyon for the Beggers, 4, 5. 
Supplication against ordinaries, 60. 
, , for reconciliation with 

Home, 149. 
Supremacy, Act of, 68. 
,, Clause, 59. 

Oath of, 68. 
, , theory of. See Ecclesi- 

astical polity. 
Swiss reformers. See Calvin and 
Zwingli. 

Taxation of clergy, 11. 
Taylor of Hadleigh, 152, 158, 167. 
Temporal control. See Ecclesi- 
astical polity. 
Ten Articles. See Articles. 
Tetzel, 25. 
Theocracy, 81. 
Thirlby, 169. 
Toleration, theory of, 19. 
Translation of Bible — 

Commissions for, 87, 88. 

Coverdale's, 87. 

Great Bible, 87. 

Luther's, 86. 

Matthew's, 87, 151. 

Tyndale's, 86. 

Wiclifs, 86. 



Transubstantiation, 89, 91, 92, 114, 

125, 133, 155. 
Treasons Acts, 68, 70, 121. 
Trent, Council of — 

convoked, 103. 

opened, 103. 

not oecumenical, 103. 

removed, 108. 

restored, 109. 

suspended, 109. 

concluded, 110. 
Tunstall, 22, 113, 123, 135, 169. 
Turks, 2, 33, 97. 
Tyndale, 86. 

Uniformity, First Act, 125. 

Second Act, 137. 
Universities, appeal to, 44, 54. 
Use of Sarum, 124. 
Utopia, the, 17-19, 186. 

Visitations, 75, 77, 119, 149. 
Vulgate, 14, 20. 

Wards, Bill of. 60. 

Warham, 6, 20, 21, 22, 40, 51, 55, 

59, 63, 73. 
Warwick, 112, 130, 140, 143, 144. 
Western rising. See Risings. 
Wiclif, 1, 25, 86. 
Wiltshire, Earl of, 45, 46. 
Windsor Commission, 122 ff. 
Wittenberg, 25, 33. 
Wolsey, 21, 22, 28, 30, 38, 39, 46, 

58, 95. 
Worms, Diet of, 26-28, 30. 

Edict of, 28. 
Wriothesly, 112. 

Xavier, Francois, 105. 

Zurich, 33. 

Zwingli, 24, 33, 107. 115. 



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